Education Commons^™

Changing Practices In The Assessment Of Writing A Discipline Redefining Itself, Marie E. Schleiff

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This thesis concerns how changes in the assessment of writing mirror the historical changes in the purposes and methodologies in education. We have witnessed a dramatic shift from the viewing and testing of writing as a series of sub-skills, with emphasis on error-avoidance and correctness of form, to viewing both the process of writing and its assessment as a means of discovery, reflection, and learning. New practices in the evaluation of writing reflect knowledge of how writing occurs and how it is taught. Results of a survey conducted over two years show high school students' responses to traditional and new …

Does Service-Learning Have A Future?, Edward Zlotkowski

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

Until very recently the service-learning movement has had an "ideological" bias; i.e., it has tended to prioritize moral and/or civic questions related to the service experience. Such a focus reflects well the movement's past but will not guarantee its future. What is needed now is a broad-based adjustment that invests far more intellectual energy in specifically academic concerns. Only by paying careful attention to the needs of individual disciplines and by allying itself with other academic interest groups, will the service-learning movement succeed in becoming an established feature of American higher education.

The Impact Of School Spending On Student Achievement: Results Of Meap Statewide Tests, Robert D. Gaudet

New England Journal of Public Policy

Examining school spending and student achievement as measured by the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program tests on a community-by-community basis indicates that high spending in and of itself does not ensure achievement. While every community must have adequate funding to deliver an acceptable level of education services, there is a wide variation in achievement in similar communities with similar spending. The data suggest that other factors influence outcomes at least as much as spending.

Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman

New England Journal of Public Policy

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated program, can provide valuable data to educational policymakers in Massachusetts and other New England states about the status of their educational reform initiatives and their performance standards. The three purposes of this article are to describe NAEP and its goals and structure, to present some of the results of the 1992 Mathematics NAEP Assessment as an example of the utility of this national assessment program, and to highlight ways in which background data collected by NAEP can be helpful in interpreting assessment results and monitoring educational reform. The six New …

Notes On Higher Education In The 1990s, Zelda F. Gamson

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article consists of a series of essays written for The Academic Workplace, the newsletter of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, since 1990. The backdrop for the essays is the increasing inequality in higher education caused by changes in the political economy of higher education, especially in New England. The first essay analyzes the roots of contemporary faculty dissatisfaction with their work lives by tracing the impacts of the expansion of higher education, changes in the student body, and greater government involvement in higher education. Subsequent essays discuss multicultural education, faculty shortages, political correctness, responses to …

The School Improvement Industry: A Case Study Of Framingham, Abigail Jurist Levy

New England Journal of Public Policy

This study looked at school improvement in the Framingham public schools from three perspectives. We were interested in finding out if the administration and school committee, local businesses with an interest in education, and agencies that provide training and technical assistance to schools have similar ideas regarding how the Framingham schools should improve. We conducted interviews with administrators and members of the school committee, local businesses and businesses involved in school/business partnerships, and six agencies that provide training and technical support to schools in the Greater Boston area. We found that although all groups shared many interests, the businesses and …

Affirmative Action Strategies In Elementary And Secondary Schools, Abigail Therstrom

New England Journal of Public Policy

Disproportionate numbers of black students do poorly on standardized tests; strategies to improve American education thus frequently target inner-city schools. These strategies often have an unrecognized affirmative action component. A search for more minority students or teachers is clearly an affirmative action effort. But the elimination of all tracking or competency grouping is another matter. Normally viewed as nothing more than a pedagogical strategy, it, like other affirmative action efforts, amounts to a conscious effort to alter the low-track status of minority pupils. Similarly, the demand for curricular reforms, racial sensitivity training, and more culturally "appropriate" tests, while not obviously …

“Knowledge Utilization” Universities: A Paradigm For Applying Academic Expertise To Social And Environmental Problems, Abraham B. Bernstein

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

Promoting the utilization of knowledge is an important mission for institutions of higher education. The "knowledge utilization" university should stand alongside the research university, the professional school, the liberal arts college, and the community college as one of the five archetypes of higher education institutions.

Environmental problems typify a class of social problems that require the utilization of existing knowledge in a trans-disciplinary manner just as much as they require the creation of new knowledge through research. These problems are characterized by their multiple dimensions-- they have scientific, technical, social, political, economic, and ethical aspects, all of which must be …

The Characteristics Of Faculty In Comprehensive Institutions, Ted I.K. Youn

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

This paper compares the characteristics of faculty in comprehensive institutions with those of faculty in other college and university categories as identified by the Carnegie Foundation. Its 1987 Carnegie Classification groups institutions on the basis of level of degree offered—per-baccalaureate to doctorate—and the comprehensiveness of their mission. Public and private institutions are included in each category.

This paper will summarize demographic features, working conditions, satisfaction and participation in academic work organizations, mobility and careers, and attitudes and orientations toward the profession and its organization.

The Buck Stops Here: Outside Grants And The General Education Process, Sandra Kanter

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

The Buck Stops Here: Outside Grants and the General Education Curriculum Change Process describes the process of general education curriculum change in six New England institutions. All had received money from foundations or governmental agencies to assist them in reforming their general education curricula. The essay is an examination of the importance of outside funds in the process of designing and implementing major changes in the general education curriculum. It explores when outside funds are most helpful and how institutions and funding agencies can improve the change process.

Case Study #1 - Weservall University, Sandra Kanter

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

In the collegial environment of a mid-sized urban University, faculty and administrators struggle with devising appropriate strategies for developing a set of general education requirements that can meet the multiple needs of a campus with a history of decentralized decision making. While some colleges vie with each other for increased enrollments, other units see general education as an opportunity to reinforce discipline specific goals; in addition, the perception of professional schools influences the ways in which the discussions and decisionmaking process are shaped.

Case Study #3 - Mystic College, Sandra Kanter

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

In an effort to develop a more effective niche in a highly competitive higher education market, a tradition bound mid-sized private college known for its professional schools decides to overhaul its general education requirements. After formulating a bold curricular proposal, the institution is buffeted by the various demands and needs of campus politics and the inevitable challenges to tradition that such innovations bring. The proposal is subject to the contrary interpretations of policy and institutional history by board, faculty, and administration.

Case Study #2 - Littleton State University, Sandra Kanter

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

A small public liberal arts institution receives word that its accreditation is in jeopardy. Though Littleton State is proud of its strong academic and professional majors and its recent institutional efforts to attack a new market of students, it must now decide the best way to examine its general education requirements or risk losing its accreditation. The case study outlines the process which the college follows in its efforts to maintain accreditation while still preserving its traditions and commitment to academic excellence. The case exemplifies the importance of examining possible internal risks as an institution responds to external pressures to …

The Mission Of Metropolitan Universities In The Utilization Of Knowledge: A Policy Analysis, Ernest Lynton

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

In the ecology of knowledge in modern society, efforts to enhance the utilization of knowledge are every bit as essential and as challenging as activities toward the creation of knowledge. An emphasis on the utilization of knowledge provides the defining mission of comprehensive or metropolitan universities. It demands a broadened conception of scholarship, and a high degree of interaction. In order to fulfill their mission, these institutions must develop appropriate internal and external bridging mechanisms, and make appropriate adaptations in the preparation, evaluation, and rewards of their faculty.

The Status Of Black And Hispanic Faculty In Massachusetts Colleges And Universities, Sandra E. Elman

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

To implement policies and programs that facilitate recruitment and retention of minority faculty, educators and policymakers must first determine the status of Blacks and Hispanics in the Commonwealth's colleges and universities. The principal objective of this report is to provide that knowledge.

The study has a dual purpose: to develop a data base on the availability of and demand for Black and Hispanic faculty in Massachusetts institutions of higher education, and to enhance our understanding of the strategies and programs required to foster recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty. Furthermore, it seeks to identify hiring trends in different types of …

Opportunity Knocked: The Origins Of Contemporary Comprehensive Colleges And Universities, Dorothy E. Finnegan

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

Taken together, general statements concerning the nature of the contemporary American comprehensive colleges and universities punctuate the ambiguous state of knowledge about and recent research on this sector. This paper examines the origins of five major institutional types from which contemporary comprehensive institutions have emerged. The institutional types demonstrate that as an aggregate these colleges removed the gender, class, religious and racial barriers of the early higher education system by providing specialized curricula, by serving particular populations, or by combining these two traits. The origins of the five institutional types discussed are: normal schools/teachers colleges, sectarian colleges -- Protestant and …

Implementing General Education: Initial Findings, Sandra Kanter, Howard London, Zelda F. Gamson

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

The article reports on the first year activities of the Project on the Implementation of General Education. The project, conducted by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE), is funded by the Exxon Education Foundation. The focus of the research is to examine how general education curricula is actually developed and implemented on college campuses that have limited resources.

New Concepts Of Professional Expertise: Liberal Learning As Part Of A Career-Oriented Education, Ernest Lynton

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

The nature of the expertise needed in most professions and higher level occupations is broadening because of changing organization and content of work. Today, a competent practitioner must be more than a narrow specialist. Curricular reviews aimed at ensuring liberal learning should abandon the false dichotomy between career-oriented and liberal education and begin by reexamining and broadening the major.

The Faculty Of The Sixties: A Reappraisal, Monroe H. Little

Trotter Review

Between 1967 and 1969 the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education initiated and substantially funded several national surveys of U.S. higher education. One such study of faculty employed a questionnaire that was mailed to approximately 100,000 full-time college and university faculty at 303 schools nationwide. The results of this survey, which solicited more than 300 items of information from each respondent and enjoyed an unusually high response rate of over 60%, contain a wealth of data on a variety of political and social issues that has rarely been subjected to careful analysis by scholars.

This is especially unfortunate in retrospect. The …

The Quality Of Public Education In Boston: An Assessment And Some Recommendations, Karen Seashore Louis

Center for Survey Research Publications

Motivation, self-esteem, achievement and the development of tolerance and acceptance of others -- these are the goals that most, like Crain, et al., have come to accept as legitimate objectives of public schooling. Yet, there is substantial opinion that the public schools of Boston have been unable to achieve standards in these areas that are acceptable to the public, the students who occupy the schools, and the professionals who run them. For example, a recent survey of Boston residents' attitudes toward the schools indicates that approximately 3/4 of all respondents -- irrespective of race, or whether there were any school …