Education Resources

Education Resources at the College

The College of Education has developed or hosts the following educational resources suitable for parents and teachers:

Annenberg/CPB Online Video Library
The College of Education has partnered with Annenberg/CPB in its efforts to provide online, on-demand access to its enormous catalog of top-quality educational programming. Annenberg/CPB has digitized and made freely available a significant portion of its vast collection of teaching and professional development resources, including almost 1000 hours of video. The Learning Technology Center in the College of Education hosts a mirror site containing all of Annenberg/CPB’s video on demand resources.

Books R4 Teens
This site features in-depth reviews and teaching ideas for recently published books in young adult literature.

Elementary School Math Club
This site provides five plans for group activities that may be used by teachers or parents. The objective of the Elementary School Math Club is to stimulate children's mathematical curiosity. Hopefully, experiencing the wonders of math will result in a positive attitude toward the subject that will serve them well throughout their formal education and beyond.
Longhorn Legacy: 100 Years of Football Programs
This online exhibit of over 100 game programs is a collaborative effort between the University of Texas' Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education and the Center for American History. The site is designed to be used interactively with the wealth of historical images and written materials on the official UT football site. Be sure to click the links as you go through the web site so you can learn more about players, coaches and the traditions of UT football.

The Presidential Timeline
The Presidential Timeline provides a single point of access to an ever-growing selection of digitized assets from the collections of the twelve Presidential Libraries of the National Archives. Among these assets you’ll find documents, photographs, audio recordings, and video relating to the events of the presidents’ lives. The goal of the project is to make these resources readily and freely available to students, educators, and adult learners throughout the world. The Presidential Timeline was designed and developed by the Learning Technology Center in The University of Texas at Austin College of Education, in conjunction with the Presidential Libraries and Terra Incognita Productions.

Talking Over Books
A love of reading is one of the greatest gifts you can give a child, and this site provides a wide range of advice on how to introduce kids to books at a young age.

Teaching Educators About Media Project
This site provides media education lesson plans for select topics in high school history and government as well as media education resources that can be applied to additional topic areas. These lesson plans examine how media construct representations of important issues and events in social studies.

KITE Technology Integration Case Library
A knowledge repository for teachers and teacher educators that enables learning through sharing, communal understanding through storytelling, continuous exchange and creation of new knowledge, and collective problem solving among K-12 schools and teacher education programs.

Importance of Education

Importance of Education
The importance of education is quite clear. Education is the knowledge of putting one's potentials to maximum use. One can safely say that a human being is not in the proper sense till he is educated.

This importance of education is basically for two reasons. The first is that the training of a human mind is not complete without education. Education makes man a right thinker. It tells man how to think and how to make decision.

The second reason for the importance of education is that only through the attainment of education, man is enabled to receive information from the external world; to acquaint himself with past history and receive all necessary information regarding the present. Without education, man is as though in a closed room and with education he finds himself in a room with all its windows open towards outside world.

This is why Islam attaches such great importance to knowledge and education. When the Qur'an began to be revealed, the first word of its first verse was 'Iqra' that is, read. Education is thus the starting point of every human activity.

A scholar (alim) is accorded great respect in the hadith. According to a hadith the ink of the pen of a scholar is more precious than the blood of a martyr. The reason being that a martyr is engaged in defense work while an alim (scholar) builds individuals and nations along positive lines. In this way he bestows a real life to the world.
The Qur'an repeatedly asks us to observe the earth and the heavens. This instills in man a desire to learn natural science. All the books of hadith have a chapter on knowledge (ilm). In Sahih Bukhari there is a chapter entitled "The virtue of one who acquires ilm (learning) and imparts that to others."

How great importance is attached to learning in Islam can be understood from an event in the life of the Prophet. At the battle of Badr in which the Prophet gained victory over his opponents, seventy people of the enemy rank were taken prisoner. These prisoners of war were literate people. In order to benefit from their education the Prophet declared that if one prisoner teaches ten Medinan children how to read and write, this will serve as his ransom and he will be set free.
This was the first school in the history of Islam established by the Prophet himself with all its teachers being non-Muslims. Furthermore, they were all war prisoners. There was all the risk that after their release they will again create problems for Islam and Muslims. This Sunnah of the Prophet shows that education is to be received whatever the risk involved.
On the one hand Islam places great emphasis on learning, on the other, all those factors which are necessary to make progress in learning have provided by God. One of these special factors is the freedom of research. One example of it is that in Makkah, the birthplace of the Prophet, dates were not grown. Afterwards the Prophet migrated to Medina, the city of dates. One day the Prophet saw that some people were atop the date trees busy in doing something. On being asked what they were engaged in, they replied that they were pollinating.

The Prophet suggested them not to do so. The following year date yield was considerably very low. The Prophet enquired them of the reason. They told him that the date crop depended on pollination. Since he suggested them to do otherwise, they had refrained from that. The Prophet then told them to go on doing as they used to, and that, "You know the worldly matters better than me."

In this way, the Prophet of Islam separated scientific research from religion. This meant that in the world of nature, man must enjoy full opportunity to conduct free research and adopt the conclusions arrived at after the research. Placing such great emphasis on knowledge. This process began in Makkah, then it reached to Medina and Damascus, afterwards it found its center in Baghdad. Ultimately it entered Spain. Spain flourished with extraordinary progress made in various academic and scientific disciplines. This flood of scientific progress entered Europe and ultimately resulted in producing the modern scientific age.

The Concept of Education

The Meaning of Education

Recently, a university professor wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. He commented that people shouldn't put too much weight on the recently released trends in SRA scores of the state's high school students. The professor went on to describe some of the unanswered questions about the nature and value of assessment. He mentioned that one of the problems with assessment was the ongoing disagreement on the very purpose of education.
A few days later, a scathing response was printed from a community member who questioned whether the University really wanted someone on their staff who didn't even know the purpose of education. Clearly, this person assumed that his definition of education was shared by all. What is the meaning of education?
Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching now that's really useful, isn't it? Educate is further defined as "to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of Thus, from these definitions, we might assume that the purpose of education is to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of students. Unfortunately, this definition offers little unless we further define words such as develop, knowledge, and character.
What is meant by knowledge? Is it a body of information that exists "out there"apart from the human thought processes that developed it? If we look at the standards and benchmarks that have been developed by many states—or at E. D. Hirsch's list of information needed for Cultural Literacy (1), we might assume this to be the definition of knowledge. However, there is considerable research leading others to believe that knowledge arises in the mind of an individual when that person interacts with an idea or experience.
This is hardly a new argument. In ancient Greece, Socrates argued that education was about drawing out what was already within the student. (As many of you know, the word education comes from the Latin e-ducere meaning "to lead out.") At the same time, the Sophists, a group of itinerant teachers, promised to give students the necessary knowledge and skills to gain positions with the city-state.
There is a dangerous tendency to assume that when people use the same words, they perceive a situation in the same way. This is rarely the case. Once one gets beyond a dictionary definition—a meaning that is often of little practical value—the meaning we assign to a word is a belief, not an absolute fact. Here are a couple of examples.
“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric Hoffer“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” ~Emma Goldman“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.” ~Ayn Rand“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” ~Bill Beattie“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.” ~Bishop Creighton“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann Tomlinson
These quotations demonstrate the diversity of beliefs about the purpose of education. How would you complete the statement, "The purpose of education is..."? If you ask five of your fellow teachers to complete that sentence, it is likely that you'll have five different statements. Some will place the focus on knowledge, some on the teacher, and others on the student. Yet people's beliefs in the purpose of education lie at the heart of their teaching behaviors.
Despite what the letter writer might have wished, there is no definition of education that is agreed upon by all, or even most, educators. The meanings they attach to the word are complex beliefs arising from their own values and experiences. To the extent that those beliefs differ, the experience of students in today's classrooms can never be the same. Worse, many educators have never been asked to state their beliefs—or even to reflect on what they believe. At the very least, teachers owe it to their students to bring their definitions into consciousness and examine them for validity.
Purposes and Functions
To make matters more complicated, theorists have made a distinction between the purpose of education and the functions of education. A purpose is the fundamental goal of the process—an end to be achieved. Functions are other outcomes that may occur as a natural result of the process— byproducts or consequences of schooling. For example, some teachers believe that the transmission of knowledge is the primary purpose of education, while the transfer of knowledge from school to the real world is something that happens naturally as a consequence of possessing that knowledge—a function of education.
Because a purpose is an expressed goal, more effort is put into attaining it. Functions are assumed to occur without directed effort. For this reason it's valuable to figure out which outcomes you consider a fundamental purpose of education. Which of the following do you actually include in your planning?
Acquisition of information about the past and present: includes traditional disciplines such as literature, history, science, mathematics
Formation of healthy social and/orformal relationships among andbetween students, teachers, others
Capacity/ability to evaluate information and to predict future outcomes (decision-making)
Capacity/ability to seek out alternative solutions and evaluate them (problem solving)
Development of mental and physical skills: motor, thinking, communication, social, aesthetic
Knowledge of moral practices andethical standards acceptable by society/culture
Capacity/ability to recognize and evaluate different points of view
Respect: giving and receiving recognition as human beings
Indoctrination into the culture
Capacity/ability to live a fulfilling life
Capacity/ability to earn a living: career education
Sense of well-being: mental and physical health
Capacity/ability to be a good citizen
Capacity/ability to think creatively
Cultural appreciation: art, music, humanities
Understanding of human relations and motivations
Acquisition/clarification of values related to the physical environment
Acquisition/clarification of personal values
Self-realization/self-reflection: awareness of one’s abilities and goals
Self-esteem/self-efficacy

As Tom Peters reminds us, "What gets measured, gets done." Regardless of the high sounding rhetoric about the development of the total child, it is the content of assessments that largely drives education. How is the capacity/ability to think creatively assessed in today's schools? To what extent is the typical student recognized and given respect? How often are students given the opportunity to recognize and evaluate different points of view when multiple choice tests require a single 'correct' answer?

Teachers who hold a more humanistic view of the purpose of education often experience stress because the meaning they assign to education differs greatly from the meaning assigned by society or their institution. It is clear in listening to the language of education that its primary focus is on knowledge and teaching rather than on the learner. Students are expected to conform to schools rather than schools serving the needs of students.
Stopping to identify and agree upon a fundamental purpose or purposes of education is rare. One sees nebulous statements in school mission statements, but they are often of the “Mom, baseball, and apple pie” variety that offer little substance on which to build a school culture. Creating meaningful and lasting change in education is unlikely without revisiting this basic definition. At the very least, educators must be challenged to identify and reexamine their beliefs in the light of present knowledge.

It is time for the focus of education to shift from what's "out there—the curriculum, assessments, classroom arrangement, books, computers—to the fundamental assumptions about and definitions of education held by educators and policymakers. NASA did not send men to the moon by building on the chassis of a model T. In the same way, education cannot hope to move beyond its present state on the chassis of 18th century education.

Introduction to Education Research

Introduction to Education Research
Doing research can be a challenge for novice doctoral students. This tutorial provides a framework for education research by walking the tutorial takers through the research process. It helps students to familiarize themselves with resources and services available at the University Libraries. Tips and examples for developing research statements as well as conducting effective searches are also included. In addition, by utilizing database tutorials, students will learn how to navigate different online databases to find their research materials.

Research is the cornerstone of any science, including both the hard sciences such as chemistry or physics and the social (or soft) sciences such as psychology, management, or education. It refers to the organized, structured, and purposeful attempt to gain knowledge about a suspected relationship.
Many argue that the structured attempt at gaining knowledge dates back to Aristotle and his identification of deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning refers to a structured approach utilizing an accepted premise (known as a major premise), a related minor premise, and an obvious conclusion. This way of gaining knowledge has been called a syllogism, and by following downward from the general to the specific, knowledge can be gained about a particular relationship. An example of an Aristotelian syllogism might be:
Major Premise:
All students attend school regularly
Minor Premise:
John is a student
Conclusion:
John attends school regularly
In the early 1600s, Francis Bacon identified a different approach to gaining knowledge. Rather than moving from the general to the specific, Bacon looked at the gathering of specific information in order to make general conclusions. This type of reasoning is called inductive and unlike Aristotelian logic allows new major premises to be determined. Inductive reasoning has been adopted into the sciences as the preferred way to explore new relationships because it allows us to use accepted knowledge as a means to gain new knowledge. For example:
Specific Premises:
John, Sally, Lenny and Sue attended class regularly
Specific Premises:
John, Sally, Lenny, and Sue received high grades
Conclusion:
Attending class regularly results in high grades
Researchers combine the powers of deductive and inductive reasoning into what is referred to now as the scientific method. It involves the determination of a major premise (called a theory or a hypothesis) and then the analysis of the specific examples (research) that would logically follow. The results might look something like:
Major Premise:

Attending classes regularly results in high grades
Class Attendance:
(Suspected Cause)
Group 1:
John, Sally, Lenny and Sue attend classes regularly
Group 2:
Heather, Lucinda, Ling, and Bob do not attend classes regularly
Grades:
(Suspected Effect)
Group 1:
John, Sally Lenny, and Sue received A’s and B’s
Group 2:
Heather, Lucinda, Ling, and Bob received C’s and D’s

Conclusion:
Attending class regularly results in higher grades when compared with not attending class regularly (the Major Premise or Hypothesis is therefore supported)
Utilizing the scientific method for gaining new information and testing the validity of a major premise, John Dewey suggested a series of logical steps to follow when attempting to support a theory or hypothesis with actual data. In other words, he proposed using deductive reasoning to develop a theory followed by inductive reasoning to support it.

Education Standards & Curriculum Development

Assessed Standards of Education

Mathematics
Reading
Social Studies
Science
Writing
English to Speakers of Other Languages

Curriculum Development Theory
The idea of curriculum is hardly new - but the way we understand and theorize it has altered over the years - and there remains considerable dispute as to meaning. It has its origins in the running/chariot tracks of Greece. It was, literally, a course. In Latin curriculum was a racing chariot; currere was to run. A useful starting point for us here might be the definition offered by John Kerr and taken up by Vic Kelly in his standard work on the subject. Kerr defines curriculum as, 'All the learning which is planned and guided by the school, whether it is carried on in groups or individually, inside or outside the school. (quoted in Kelly 1983: 10; see also, Kelly 1999). This gives us some basis to move on - and for the moment all we need to do is highlight two of the key features:
Learning is planned and guided. We have to specify in advance what we are seeking to achieve and how we are to go about it.
The definition refers to schooling. We should recognize that our current appreciation of curriculum theory and practice emerged in the school and in relation to other schooling ideas such as subject and lesson.
In what follows we are going to look at four ways of approaching curriculum theory and practice:
1. Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted.
2. Curriculum as an attempt to achieve certain ends in students - product.
3. Curriculum as process.
4. Curriculum as praxis.

Curriculum as a syllabus to be transmitted
Many people still equate a curriculum with a syllabus. Syllabus, naturally, originates from the Greek (although there was some confusion in its usage due to early misprints). Basically it means a concise statement or table of the heads of a discourse, the contents of a treatise, the subjects of a series of lectures. In the form that many of us will have been familiar with it is connected with courses leading to examinations - teachers talk of the syllabus associated with, say, the Cambridge Board French GSCE exam. What we can see in such documents is a series of headings with some additional notes which set out the areas that may be examined.
A syllabus will not generally indicate the relative importance of its topics or the order in which they are to be studied. In some cases as, those who compile a syllabus tend to follow the traditional textbook approach of an 'order of contents', or a pattern prescribed by a 'logical' approach to the subject, or - consciously or unconsciously - a the shape of a university course in which they may have participated. Thus, an approach to curriculum theory and practice which focuses on syllabus is only really concerned with content. Curriculum is a body of knowledge-content and/or subjects. Education in this sense, is the process by which these are transmitted or 'delivered' to students by the most effective methods that can be devised.

Where people still equate curriculum with a syllabus they are likely to limit their planning to a consideration of the content or the body of knowledge that they wish to transmit. 'It is also because this view of curriculum has been adopted that many teachers in primary schools', 'have regarded issues of curriculum as of no concern to them, since they have not regarded their task as being to transmit bodies of knowledge in this manner'.

Research, Planning and Development

Types of Research

Basic research discovers the underlying processes and systems that make a plant, animal, ecosystem, food system, community, or marketplace work. For example, basic research might seek to discover the genetic map of a plant or animal, or show how economic and human resources affect economic growth in rural areas.
Applied research expands on basic research findings to uncover practical ways in which new knowledge can be advanced to benefit individuals and society. Here, researchers might use a genetic map to develop gene therapies to treat human diseases or develop new programs to enhance community capital and stability in rural communities.
Rresearch may involve traditional, self-contained laboratory or field projects, or a combination of a traditional research project with education and extension activities. Such a so-called integrated project might have as a goal the reduction of diabetes in children through a community-based program that includes research, extension, and education components. Integrated projects are expected to generate new knowledge and/or apply existing knowledge quickly through the dissemination of information on specific issues where results may be visible in the short term.
Who Does the Research
CSREES funds researchers at land-grant institutions, at other institutions of higher learning, in federal agencies, or in the private sector.
CSREES has a unique relationship with the nation's land-grant universities and colleges, most of which came into being in the 1860s through federal land grants aimed at promoting agricultural research and education. Today, more than 100 land-grant institutions are scattered throughout the United States and its territories.
Much CSREES-sponsored research within the land-grant system is carried out by individual researchers. But because several states or regions may share climate, soil, market outlets, and other conditions, much research is also carried out by teams from several universities or other institutions through multistate research groups. These groups provide cooperative, coordinated attacks on problems of regional and national interest and may include specialists from several land-grant institutions, the USDA Agricultural Research Service, and one or more of the agricultural experiment stations located in every state.

Research Program Development and Management
Research and integrated research-education-extension funding opportunities are initiated by Congressional legislation, with the level of funding then determined by Congressional appropriations passed into law.
CSREES informs Congress of emerging research trends and needs, for example through the publication of white papers and other documents and reports. CSREES provides feedback to Congress on the impact of funded research upon request and publishes information throughout this Web site on results and impacts of completed and ongoing research.
Once the legislation is passed, CSREES' scientific staff translates the legislation into a comprehensive, high-priority research or integrated program. National program leaders from across CSREES work together in teams to share insights they gain from stakeholder input and from their individual pursuit of knowledge and information. This ensures the broadest perspective in developing or enhancing a CSREES research or integrated program that is focused on national priorities that are in line with the Congressional mandates. Based on this information, CSREES scientific staff drafts a request for applications (RFA), which is reviewed by policy and legislative experts for compliance with Congressional intent and, upon approval, is released publicly.

Each RFA may generate from 2 to more than 600 applications, which then undergo a rigorous review process. That review is conducted by a panel of 3 to 25 individuals with international-level expertise in the field in question. These panels review each application, evaluating it based on its scientific merits and how well it addresses the research priorities determined by Congress and the CSREES stakeholder input process, and the quality of the facilities and researchers who would conduct the project. A summary of the panel review for each eligible application is recorded, and the panel recommends whether or not it should be funded.
Monitoring research and other projects funded by CSREES is a critical part of USDA stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Researchers are required to file annual reports and document their spending to CSREES. These annual reports are reviewed by scientific staff and posted on the public Web site to keep the public informed of research activity and developments. National program leaders and other scientific staff visit research sites and keep in touch with researchers on a routine basis to monitor progress.

Education Research Project

Education Research Project
What is the Education Research Project?
Education Research Project is a national, independent research organization that conducts research on educational products, services, and trends for public and private institutions on a national, regional, and local basis. Since 1990, the Education Research Project has worked to discover what you (the front-line educator, supervisor, principal, or administrator) find works or doesn't work -- and what's needed or not needed -- in today's classrooms. Our work is solely for research purposes, does not involve sales of any kind, and guarantees protection of participants' names and privacy.

Research Projects Categories

The following details provide additional information on research activities conducted in Education across all areas.

Projects:

School Reform
Standards Assessment and Accountability
Strategic Planning for Education
Principles, Teachers and Teaching
Higher Education and Training
Early Childhood and Special Education

School Reform
Evaluation of Comprehensive School Reform Models. Analyzed the implementation and effectiveness of comprehensive or "whole school" reforms in American education.
Evaluation of the Edison Schools Program. Evaluated the privately owned but publicly funded Edison schools model in the United States. Provided systematic comparison of Edison schools with similar public schools.
National Analysis of U.S. Charter Schools. Charter schools receive public funding but operate free from many traditional public school rules. This national project identified what is working well and not so well in charter schools in order to promote best practices.
Evaluation of the New York City Social Promotion Policy. New York City ended social promotion and adopted a series of policies to aid children at risk of failing. RAND is evaluating this policy's effects on student achievement.
Evaluation of Cognitive Tutor Model. Using random control trials, RAND is assessing the effect of a computer-based instructional technology on student learning.

Standard Assessment and Accountability
The Use of Value-Added Modeling to Assess Growth in Achievement. Pioneered work on value-added methods, which compare students' test scores over time in order to identify teachers and schools that perform above expectations.
Standardized Testing in Arabic. Collaborated with international contractors to develop the world's first independent standardized tests offered to students in Arabic.
National Longitudinal Study of No Child Left Behind. Led the Congressionally-mandated study of NCLB. The five-year study used national surveys to measure implementation and test scores to assess the effects of this major reform.
Implementation of Standards-based Accountability. Complementing the project listed above, examined the implementation of No Child Left Behind in three states focusing on the subjects of mathematics and science.

Strategic Planning for Education
Assessment and Implications of Thirty Years of the California Public Schools. Examined the history and status of the K-12 California schools across all functions and compared them to other states to identify progress and recommend future strategies.
Evaluation of Reform Initiatives in Syria. Examined the relationships among Syria's education system, society, and economy. Evaluated reform plans and recommended strategies for improvement.
Design and Implementation of Comprehensive Standards-based K-12 Education Reform in Qatar. Analyzed the existing K-12 education system and recommended options for improvement. Provided implementation support for the chosen reforms with organization building, recruitment of contractors and senior staff, and continuous evaluation.
District Downsizing in Pittsburgh. Using sophisticated statistical analysis, rank-ordered schools in terms of their contribution to student outcomes to inform decisionmaking on which to close.

Principles, Teachers and Training
Principal Incentive Program in Pittsburgh. Helped design and is now evaluating the principal pay-for-performance system in Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Measuring Teacher Quality in Los Angeles. Combining several major data sets, currently investigating the relationships between teachers' certification and licensure, other teacher background characteristics and student achievement.
Incentives to Promote Teacher Quality in Mexico. Evaluated the Carrera Magisterial program at its ten-year mark and provided recommendations for improvement. The project was the first Mexican program evaluation awarded to a non-Mexican organization.
New Instructional Practices in Mathematics and Science. In a series of projects, documented new teaching methods and related them to student achievement on a variety of test measures.
Assessing the Implementation and Impact of Teachers for a New Era. Tracked the progress of the Carnegie Corporation's efforts to improve teacher preparation in colleges of education and documented the challenges involved in changing them.
Evaluating California's Class-Size Reduction Initiative. Evaluated a statewide program to reduce class sizes for kindergarten through grade three.
Gains Analysis for Use in Teacher Performance Assessments. Currently developing and testing new statistical methods to use student test scores and other inputs to assess teacher performance.

Higher Education and Training
Supply and Demand for E-Skills in Europe. Surveyed the employer demand for skills related to information and communications technology and the educational opportunities to acquire them.
A European Vocational Learning System for the 21st Century. Outlined key attributes of a sound vocational education system in the United Kingdom and recommended government policies to best meet future needs.
University Reform. Analyzed the organization and its performance to modernize and improve the university. Provided specific strategies, including the establishment of an independent governance structure, a common core curriculum, and performance management of faculty.
Strategic Planning for Higher Education in Qatar. Used multiple sources of data to understand the links between higher education, labor markets, and society's needs. Recommended a strategy for developing new institutions and making the best use of foreign scholarships.
Evaluation of Brain Korea 21 Graduate Student Training in South Korea. Developed a data-based approach to evaluating the Brain Korea 21 program, which funds graduate training at South Korea's universities.
In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in United States Higher Education. Developed a new approach to understanding the challenges and successes in American higher education, using industry analysis of the role of markets, strategy, and competition in generating prestige.
The Collegiate Learning Assessment: Measuring Student Skills Achieved in Higher Education. Developed measures of the critical thinking and reasoning skills students should acquire in college to contribute to the development of a test now in use by more than two hundred American colleges and universities to assess the value the institutions add to their students' education.

Early Childhood and Special Education
State Scale-Up of Universal Preschool Education. Documented state policies and their consequences in the movement toward universal preschool.
Early Identification of Special Educational Needs. Compared children with special needs before and after starting school to provide policy recommendations to promote early identification of special needs.
Understanding the Effects of Early Education on Later Achievement. Explored the impact of full-day and half-day kindergarten on later achievement through the fifth grade. Identified important non-cognitive indicators of school readiness and later achievement.