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Noting that locating suitable space can be a challenge when starting a new early childhood program or relocating an established program in New York City, this resource paper focuses on physical sites for early education and child care programs and services. Presented in three parts, the paper includes tips for assessing the feasibility of a potential site, estimating the cost, finding the funding to develop the site, and working with an architect. Part 1 identifies six ways to locate potential sites in the community. Part 2 provides suggestions for assessing the suitability of a site for a child care program, considering both licensing requirements and program needs. This part includes tips with regard to amount of instructional space, location in building, other space, playground, rent, and potential space problems. Part 3 focuses on finding and working effectively with a qualified architect. This part includes questions to ask the architect, a list of architectural services, a glossary of architectural terms, and addresses for further information. (KB)

This paper draws on the experience of the Sebastopol Union School District, a small school district in California, which formed a team to manage facilities renovation. The team was comprised of the district superintendent, the architect, a construction manager, and a facility/financial consultant; it allowed the district to succeed at the school construction "game" in a manner similar to large school districts that enjoy well-developed facility departments. The paper outlines the roles and responsibilities of each member of the team in the following identified phases of facility development: master planning/educational specifications, funding and finances, design, pre- construction, construction, and post-construction. It illustrates the manner in which the several consultants coordinated their roles and responsibilities in an effort to ensure the most effective leadership for successful completion of projects that support the facility master plan. (EV)

This paper presents the results of a doctoral dissertation study that examined professional practice characteristics in connection with expressed continuing professional education (CPE) needs among licensed landscape architects. Out of the 650 surveys sent to landscape architects across the United States, 336 were returned. The survey found that gender which has been rarely investigated in the CPE literature, appeared to be of greater influence than other individual variables on needs assessment measures conducted with learners across all three scales in the study. It also found that age and years of practice had little influence beyond measuring current level of competence, and that region and location had little influence on perceived CPE needs. The study highlights the importance of the cultural variables related to practice setting. Further, the study identifies a relationship between demographic variables and commonly used assessment scales. (Contains 23 references.) (MDM)

As the automated scoring of constructed responses reaches operational status, the issue of monitoring the scoring process becomes a primary concern, particularly when the goal is to have automated scoring operate completely unassisted by humans. Using a vignette from the Architectural Registration Examination and data for 326 cases with both human and computer scores available, this study reports on the usefulness of an approach based on classification trees (L. Breiman, J. Friedman, R. Olshen, and C. Stone, 1984) as a means of quality control. Five studies were carried out analyzing different aspects of the "training set" and making efforts to cross-validate the results of the analysis by applying the resulting classification trees to data that had not been used in the development of the tree. The application of classification trees led to valuable insights with implications for operational quality control processes. Furthermore, classification tree methods were shown to be able to select cases for future quality control processes accurately and efficiently, thereby suggesting that future quality control selection procedures may be completely automated. However, further analyses are needed to establish whether classification trees can be relied on to identify cases that are the most likely to require some adjustment without incurring the potentially costly error of ignoring solutions that are likely to require adjustment. (Contains 10 tables, 7 figures, and 13 references.) (Author/SLD)

This mix of presentation graphis, forms, and text presents guidelines for developing a school-district policy for selecting consultants to design and carry out school-building projects. The specific policy presented is that of the Bellevue (Washington) School District. The manual describes how to: (1) develop a written consultant-selection policy; (2) conduct architectural interviews; (3) develop formal written guidelines and policies; (4) conduct consultant notification and fee negotiations; (5) maximize community and staff involvement; (6) create a successful match between consultants and the school-building project; and (7) conduct a postevaluation. The advantages and disadvantages of this type of architectural-selection process are described. Sample checklists, policies, and building plans are included. (LMI)

This paper presents a technique for applying the Rule Space Model of cognitive diagnosis (Tatsuoka, 1983) to assessment in a semantically rich domain. Responses of 122 architects to 22 architecture test items developed to assess a range of architectural knowledge were analyzed using Rule Space. Verbal protocol analysis guided the construction of a model of examinee performance, consisting of processes for constructing an initial representation of an item (labeled "understand"), forming goals and performing actions based on those goals ("solve"), and determining whether goals have been attempted and satisfied ("check"). Item attributes derived from these processes formed the basis for diagnosis. Successful diagnostic classifications were obtained for approximately 65 percent, 90 percent, and 40 percent of examinees based, respectively, on attributes associated with the "understand,""solve," and "check" processes of the problem-solving model. The findings support the effectiveness of Rule Space in a complex domain and suggest directions for developing new architecture items by using attributes particularly effective at distinguishing among examinees of different ability levels. Nine tables and three figures present study data. (Contains 23 references.) (Author/SLD)

A study examined the influence of organizational context on professionals' determination of appropriate style and technical content for external correspondence. Subjects were 200 architects and engineers employed by a state government agency whose mission is to provide design and construction management services to state facilities. Data were triangulated through analyses of writing samples and discourse-based interviews, observational notes, participants' questionnaire responses, and informal interviews with key informants. Results showed that although the subjects considered their report letters to other state agencies and contractors to be "technical" documents, they reported that they did not know the level of technical expertise of their intended audiences, or, if they did know, this understanding did not greatly influence their determination of appropriate style and technical content. Instead, the subjects reported that they typically decided the extent of technical material and the stylistic strength with which that material was presented based on three factors: (1) the writer's perception of his or her role in relation to the reader's role, as defined by the organization; (2) the writer's perception of the roles the document plays in the design and construction process and in the discourse chain associated with the specific project; and (3) the writer's perception of the document's relation to other discourses and other past, present, and future documents. (Author/FL)