Individually administered literacy assessments were conducted with approximately 6,000 adults representing the 20 million persons served by the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Employment and Training Administration through the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) or the Employment Service/Unemployment Insurance programs. Information-processing…

This document, consisting of 7 chapters, 35 figures, 409 tables, plus 20 appendix tables, provides statistical data on most aspects of United States education, both public and private, from kindergarten through graduate school. The chapters cover the following topics: (1) all levels of education; (2) elementary and secondary education; (3)…

This manual provides documentation and guidance for users of the public release data files for the Early Childhood Education (ECE) component of the 1991 National Household Education Survey (NHES:91). Information is presented about the purpose of the study, the data collection instruments, the sample design, and data collection and data processing…

An action research project investigated the effect of reciprocal teaching instruction and use on the comprehension of seventh-grade general English students. Reciprocal teaching is a form of dialogue structured around four skills--question generation, summarization, clarification, and prediction. These techniques are used in small group…

Two studies evaluated the use of the Student Team Reading (STR) and Student Team Writing (STW) program in urban middle schools. The first study investigated the use of STR in 20 experimental sixth-grade classes in three schools matched with 39 classes in three control schools. The second study investigated the use of STR and STW in sixth, seventh,…

For the second time, the National Center for Education Statistics has prepared a report that brings together comparable data concerning several key education characteristics, by state, region, and outlying area for a consecutive 21-year period. Characteristics examined in this report for public elementary education and secondary education include:…

In this report, the author traces the recent development of standards for mathematics teaching. Two central tensions are examined: (1) the tension between arriving at consensus and effecting change; and (2) the tension between providing direction and affording discretion in practice. With a focus on the challenges inherent in the ambitious vision…

Data collected from the 1987-88 Schools and Staffing Survey supplied estimates of teacher attrition from public and private schools and from the profession, sources of supply of newly hired teachers, and destinations of attritioning teachers. Findings indicate that: (1) rates of attrition in public schools do not vary as greatly from the national…

The effects of portfolio assessment on mathematics students' attitudes about grades, their awareness of their mathematics strengths and weaknesses, and their abilities to set reasonable goals were studied for 12 fifth-grade students given a survey on attitudes about grading near the end of a 10-week term. Students also wrote about their strengths…

The elementary and secondary education data collection system has undergone a major transformation over the past decade, becoming a coordinated, cohesive system. This report reviews what the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) can and cannot say about education in the United States for kindergarten through grade 12. Six issue areas…

Children begin school with the ability to use their informal and implicit conceptual knowledge to guide their problem solving, but shift to the use of superficial strategies in their attempts to solve word problems as they progress through school. This paper describes a study designed to investigate the effects of an instructional sequence that…

This study provides evidence of the positive impact of library media centers (LMCs) on academic achievement in 221 Colorado public schools during the 1988-89 school year. The importance of the library media specialist's instructional role is also verified. In contrast to previous research on the relationship, this study uses schools rather than…

The estimates in this publication are key statistics reported early in the 1992-93 school year. They include the number of students in membership, teachers, and high school graduates for public and private elementary and secondary schools, and total revenues and expenditures for the operation of public elementary and secondary schools. The public…

This study sought to determine the effects of the Junior Great Books program on the higher level thinking skills of gifted/able learners and on interpretive reading skills development. Three groups of students were observed. They consisted of 83 elementary students in 2 experimental groups, all of whom participated in a Junior Great Books program,…

There has been a large amount of research on the relative effects of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning on achievement and productivity. This paper reports a study designed to determine the effect of cooperative learning strategies on mathematics achievement of 7th graders. Based on school records indicating whether a student…