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A three-part study conducted at a medium-sized, Christian comprehensive college in Michigan (Calvin College) examined the college choice process including why students apply but do not enroll, as well as the reasons why students enroll. Subjects consisted of: (1) those who made multiple inquiries and had multiple contacts with the college but did not apply (N=247); (2) admitted students who did not enroll (N=274); and (3) incoming freshmen (N=822). Subjects were asked, in part, what was important in their college-choice decision, how the college compared to their final choice (or the second choice of enrolled freshmen), and their comparative impressions of the schools under consideration. The most important reasons for not attending Calvin reported by admitted students not enrolling and those making inquiries but not applying were location, high cost, receiving a better offer, and losing interest. Lack of adequate financial aid was also a major influence for those not enrolling. (Contains five references.) (GLR)

This paper presents a comprehensive case analysis of formal environmental scanning processes in three different institutions of higher education. The study focuses on how environmental scanning activities are organized and used to support institutional planning and decision-making. Special emphasis is placed on describing how environmental circumstances influenced the development of the environmental scanning process and analyzing how environmental scanning information is utilized within various institutional sectors. The research questions addressed at the case study sites are: (1) What events and circumstances led to the development of the environmental scanning process at the case site? (2) How is the environmental scanning process currently structured and organized within the case site? (3) How are the environmental domains defined and scanned by the organization? (4) How is environmental scanning information incorporated into the planning and decision making activities of the case site? (5) What is the perceived effectiveness of environmental scanning upon the planning and decision-making efforts at the case site? Results indicated that support from the chief executive officer was a necessary but not sufficient step in establishing a credible environmental scanning process; that decision makers were looking for ways to reduce environmental uncertaintly; and that scanning information was used for several functions including strategy formulation, problem identification, decision selling, and goal and objectives setting. Contains 39 references. (GLR)

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 of teaching articulated in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics "Standards," the author examines a case from her own teaching. The case is based on a lesson in which the author's third-grade students were working on a problem involving fractions. The story recounts the interactions that occurred during the lesson and the reflections of the author in response to those interactions. The report concludes with discussion of issues inherent in the notion of "implementation" of these new standards. (Author/MDH)

This paper explores the impact that the evaluation industry has had on the development and implementation of social policy and programs, primarily as carried out by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. In addition, major tools evaluators have developed and used, and the institutional arrangements through which they have worked are reviewed. Three principal approaches that have emerged in the evaluation industry funded by executive and congressional agencies and by the grant and contract establishment are microsimulation, experimental and quasi-experimentation, and qualitative studies. With regard to experimentation and quasi-experimentation, a case for randomization, selection modeling, the New Jersey income support experiment, selecting a probabilistic sample, the elusiveness of the target population, attrition, the need to generalize to untested treatments, biases arising from the limited duration of experiments, feedback effects, Hawthorne effects, and the elusiveness of consensus are considered. Advocates of each method may claim that their method of estimating program impact offers policymakers better insights into the effects of policy decisions than those of alternative methods. Analysts have been unable to agree about the impact of social policy evaluation. Current practices, including those used by the General Accounting Office, are generally not adequate as guides to making choices among social policy alternatives. Improved results will be obtained only by making more effective use of various methodologies and by achieving a better balance in funding them. There is cause for optimism that program evaluation will justify its continued funding. (SLD)

Formative, in-process evaluation results can be used to refine or "fine tune" Even Start programs. The assumption is that the programs have obtained comprehensive and appropriate empirical data on the assessment of the program as a whole as well as its specific goals. This six-step model uses evaluation data to improve program delivery. The steps are as follows: (1) convene a planning team of five to eight people who represent various aspects of Even Start delivery; (2) develop a shared understanding about what the local evaluation results mean for or about the program; (3) explore reasons for the results (the problems); (4) generate and evaluate possible solutions; (5) develop and implement the plan for program refinement; and (6) evaluate the success of the plan. Following the presentation and explanation of this model, two fictional examples of the model in action are provided. One describes a program that uses that model to solve the program's retention problems. The second focuses on a program that encounters unexpected problems with Even Start parents' reading ability. (YLB)

The National Research Council is coordinating the development of national standards for science education in grades K through 12. By the fall of 1994, National Science Education Standards will be completed and published. The standards will contain narrative descriptions of what all students should be able to do to engage and understand the natural world. The standards will address science curriculum, teaching, and assessment and will represent the consensus of teachers and other science educators, scientists, and the general public. The following chapters are included; (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Taking Up the Challenge"; (3) "A Framework for the Content Standards"; (4) "Fundamental Understandings and Prototype Standards for the Physical Sciences"; (5) "Fundamental Understandings for the Life Sciences"; (6) "Nature of Science"; (7) "Application of Science"; and (8) "Context of Science." (PR)

The issue of increasing the effectiveness of alumni development and fund raising programs to ensure quality in academic programs and campus life for the coming decade was examined. The study's primary purposes were to: (1) describe the development of a comprehensive decision support system for alumni and fund raising activities at one independent university--the University of Hartford, Connecticut; (2) examine specific research and management applications of that system; and (3) feature examples of effective analyses and reports it can generate. Discussions focused on early collaboration between institutional researchers and advancement professionals which facilitated the study and led to construction of a multipurpose alumni survey. Preliminary results indicated that administrators desiring to strengthen fund raising programs should concentrate on the following areas: improve community and donor relationships; gain the confidence of the institution and the participation of its president; build commitment among staff to improve outcomes; interact with people (including staff); and participate in other cultivation/solicitation activities. Contains 18 references. (GLR)

The responses from questionnaires (N=182) given to 201 individuals who were provided an opportunity to join the faculty of two research universities (one rural, one urban) were analyzed to determine the factors influencing their decisions to join or not join. Interviews with 60% of the respondents were conducted to gather further information. Particular attention was paid to the relative weight and importance placed on the tangible, intangible, and non-work related benefits in the decision making process. Comparisons were drawn from previous faculty recruitment studies and to the complementary retention study, as well as between the urban and rural subject universities. In all, of the ten most influential factors found in the decision making process, eight were intangible benefits of employment and present in all analyses: institutional, department and associates reputations; research opportunities; teaching assignments/opportunities; career advancement opportunities, congeniality of associates; and rapport with departmental leaders. The ninth common factor was the tangible benefit "teaching/research load," and the uncommon factor found in the top ten of one of the universities was the tangible benefit of "library facilities"; in the other university it was "research funding." (19 references) (GLR)

State programs offer greatest promise for practical strategic actions to enhance the quality of the nation's adult work force. Three steps in the recursive process that create a model of state action are as follows: (1) documentation of the platform for action, which consists of current adult work force attributes and current institutional capacities to advance the quality of a state's labor force; (2) initial decision with respect to short-term work force quality goals; and (3) subsequent (recurring) decisions. The maturation of initiatives in two states--California and Florida--offers documentation of the instability that characterizes state efforts to address adult work force quality issues. According to the first step of the model, the state's role is to translate national demographic predictions into state-specific labor force quality implications. The goal should be to establish a combined early warning system and accessible intelligence network. An important component of the latter is an accurate inventory of current institutional capabilities. Recommendations for work force quality enhancement include the following: (1) investigate better uses of existing data systems; (2) document current institutional capacities to respond to work force needs; (3) explore the applicability of Canada's JOBSCAN concept; (4) expand the scope of reciprocal expectations from individuals and organizations receiving state benefits; (5) consider the consequences of expanding competency certification; and (6) join the Department of Defense in recommitment of military training funds to adult work force renewal. (Contains 58 bibliographic references and 60 endnotes.) (YLB)

In this paper, we estimate a rich model of college major choice using a panel of experimentally-derived data. Our estimation strategy combines two types of data: data on self-reported beliefs about future earnings from potential human capital decisions and survey-based measures of risk and time preferences. We show how to use these data to identify a general life-cycle model, allowing for rich patterns of heterogeneous beliefs and preferences. Our data allow us to separate perceptions about the degree of risk or perceptions about the current versus future payoffs for a choice from the individual's preference for risk and patience. Comparing our estimates of the general model to estimates of models which ignore heterogeneity in risk and time preferences, we find that these restricted models are likely to overstate the importance of earnings to major choice. Additionally, we show that while men are less risk averse and patient than women, gender differences in expectations about own-earnings, risk aversion, and patience cannot explain gender gaps in major choice.

A methodological framework is presented for representing tradeoffs among alternative combinations of training and aiding for personnel in complex situations. In general, more highly trained people need less aid, and those with less training need more aid. Balancing training and aiding to accomplish the objectives of the system in a cost effective way is the concern. A wide variety of methods, tools, and models is reviewed. These approaches are evaluated in terms of their advantages and disadvantages when used to analyze training/aiding tradeoffs. The use of the proposed framework and its component methods, tools, and models is illustrated by an analysis of a realistically complex example involving the design of a head-up display for use by truck drivers in long-haul transport. Results demonstrate that the tradeoff issue can be involved in other than an ad hoc manner. Research needed in predictive models, learning processes, and intelligent systems is reviewed. Four tables and nine figures illustrate the discussion. (SLD)

Why individuals choose not to sign up for social programs, particularly when the costs of sign-up are low and the benefits generous, is a crucial question for policy scholars. In this paper, we show that a substantial share of qualified middle school students fail to sign up for Washington State's College Bound Scholarship program, and this failure leads these students to lose out on college financial aid for which they would be eligible. The availability of student-level data allows us to show that the actual student signup rates are lower than has been previously documented in public reports. We find that the student characteristics that are associated with signing the pledge closely parallel the characteristics of low-income students who go to 4-year colleges. As a consequence, simulations suggest that while the pledge program may address college enrollment gaps, increasing college-going by some historically disadvantaged groups, it also would modestly reinforce inequalities in educational attainment that exist between low-income student sub-groups. Finally, our qualitative analysis finds that incorrect perceptions that nearly all eligible students sign the pledge may be leading program administrators to shift attention away from middle school sign-up decisions in favor of efforts to get high school pledgees to follow through with requirements for scholarship receipt. The following are appended: (1) Regional Officer Interview Questions; and (2) Principal/Guidance Counselor Interview Questions.

We build and estimate a dynamic model of teenagers' choices of schooling and crime, incorporating four factors that may contribute to the different routes taken by different teenagers: heterogeneous endowments, unequal opportunities, uncertainties about one's own ability, and contemporaneous shocks. We estimate the model using administrative panel data from Chile that link school records with juvenile criminal records. Counterfactual policy experiments suggest that, for teenagers with disadvantaged backgrounds, interventions that combine mild improvement in their schooling opportunities with free tuition (by adding 22 USD per enrollee-year to the existing voucher) would lead to an 11% decrease in the fraction of those ever arrested by age 18 and a 17% increase in the fraction of those consistently enrolled throughout primary and secondary education. [This report was financially supported by Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (CONICYT/ FONDAP/15130009) and partially supported by the supercomputing infrastructure of the NLHPC (ECM-02).]

Do students respond to sticker prices or actual prices when applying to college? These costs differ for students eligible for financial aid. Students who do not understand this may not apply to some colleges because of the perceived high cost. We test for this form of "sticker shock" using College Board data on SAT scores sends, as a proxy for applications, to state flagship institutions for students entering college in 2006-2013. Some public flagships guarantee financial aid will meet full financial need. Sticker price increases at those schools would not affect the actual cost after factoring in financial aid and should not affect decisions for those eligible for aid. We exploit the large and variable increases in sticker prices at public flagships during the financial crisis generated from state budget shortfalls. We also control for local labor market conditions to abstract from the recession's impact on individual educational decisions. We find evidence of sticker shock -- students unaffected by virtue of institutional aid policies still apply less often. Using data from the National Student Clearinghouse, we also find that price increases at public flagships reduce enrollment of high achieving students, regardless of financial aid status, who often choose private colleges instead.

In most organizations, promotions often require self-nomination and competition among applicants. However, research on gender differences in preferences for competition suggests that this process might result in fewer women choosing to participate. We study whether changing promotion schemes from a default where applicants must opt in (i.e., self-nominate) to a default where applicants must opt out (i.e., they are automatically considered for promotion, but can choose not to be considered) attenuates gender differences. In our first experiment, although women are less likely than men to choose competitive environments under the traditional opt-in framing, in the opt-out system both women and men have the same participation rate as men in the opt-in system. The increase in participation of women into competition is not associated with negative consequences on performance or well-being. In our second experiment, we show that opt-out framing does not entail penalties from evaluators making decisions about whom to hire. These results support the promise of choice architecture to reduce disparities in organizations. More generally, our findings suggest that gender differences in attitudes toward completion may be context-dependent. [Funding for this research was provided by University of Toronto Rotman School of Management's Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) and Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR).]

We study the impact of financial incentives on higher education decisions and the choice of major. We rely on a reform whereby Israeli kibbutzim shifted from their traditional policy of equal sharing to productivity-based wages. We use for identification the staggered implementation of this reform in different kibbutzim. In this setting of very low initial returns to education, we find that the dramatic increase in the rate of return and its sharp variation across fields of study led to a large increase in the probability of receiving a Bachelor degree, especially in STEM fields of study that are expected to yield higher financial returns. For men this increase was largely in computer science and engineering, and for women in biology, chemistry and computer science. Our findings suggest that investment in higher education and the choice of major are responsive to increases in the return to education for both men and women. [Financial support from the European Research Council.]

The decision to pursue formal education has significant labor market implications. To approach the decision rationally, a student must consider the costs and benefits of each available option. However, mounting empirical evidence suggests that reported expectations of costs and benefits are uncertain and vary across students. Hastings et al. (2015) (hereafter HNRZ) provide a basic theoretical frame-work for differences in student beliefs based on the costs of information gathering. Students who value financial outcomes less or who must pay a high cost to gather information are likely to gather less information. Based on this model, HNRZ highlights five predictions, detailed in this report. Each prediction is an implication of differing costs of information across groups or student preferences. HNRZ evaluated these predictions using Chilean data and and support for them. As they note, there is a need for the model to be tested in alternate settings. This paper evaluates four of these predictions using the data set from Huntington-Klein (2015) (hereafter HK), which comes from a 2012 survey of 1,224 high school juniors and seniors near Seattle, Washington, and focuses on differing levels of education rather than major choice. More details about survey design, survey administration, and response rates are in Huntington-Klein (2015).

Curriculum planning emphasizes that education should serve to enable society to achieve its needs and aspirations. One such need in Kenya, which has remained largely elusive, is national cohesion and integration. Research has revealed that education contributes to the development of social capital by increasing individual propensity to trust and be tolerant. Learning as a social activity has a strong influence on the development of shared norms and the value placed on tolerance and understanding within a community. This paper discusses the relationship between education and cohesion. It explores the contemporary conceptualization and practice with respect to the place of national cohesion and integration in the school curriculum. The paper argues that the gap between the intended, implemented and achieved curriculum is too wide, and this especially undermines the affective domain, which is the mainstay of providing learners with opportunities to practice cohesion and integration. The paper further discusses the extent to which the current school curriculum is designed to foster national cohesion and integration, and evaluates achievement of this intention suggesting that the school policies and context do not empower learners with attitudes that facilitate cohesion. Finally, the paper explores the opportunities and challenges that exist within the school curriculum to foster national cohesion and integration. A bibliography is included.

What influences college student borrowing? In a field experiment with a large community college, we send emails about federal student loans to students who have received information about financial aid but have not made a borrowing decision. A treatment reminding students that they need not borrow the maximum amount of available loan aid does not affect borrowing. Treatments referencing amounts borrowed by recent graduates shift students from borrowing the maximum amount to not borrowing. Consistent with the hypothesis that students experience choice overload when observing multiple dollar amounts, the response is largest among low-performing students and arises from inaction.

In identifying whether universities provide opportunities for low-income students, there is a measurement challenge: different institutions face students with different incomes and preparation. We show how a hypothetical university's "relevant pool"--the students from whom it could plausibly draw--affects popular measures: the Pell share, Bottom Quintile share, and Intergenerational Mobility. Using a proof by contradiction, we demonstrate that universities ranked highly on the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately few low-income students. We also show the reverse: universities slated for penalties on the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately many low-income students. Furthermore, the Intergenerational Mobility measure penalizes universities that face relatively equal income distributions, which are probably good for low-income students, and rewards universities that face very unequal income distributions. In short, by confounding differences in university effort with differences in circumstances, the popular measures could distort university decision making and produce unintended consequences. We demonstrate that, with well-thought-out data analysis, it is possible to create benchmarks that actually measure what they are intended to measure. In particular, we present a measure that overcomes the deficiencies of the popular measures and is informative about all, not just low-income, students.

In most U.S. states retirement benefits constitute an important component of compensation for public school teachers, and the structure of teacher retirement systems has been the subject of a prominent public policy debate. The prevalence of underfunded state pension systems has resulted in discussion about the prudence of moving from traditional defined benefit (DB) systems towards defined contribution (DC) systems, which are by definition fully funded. Few states have incorporated DC features into teacher pension systems and little is known about how providing teachers with greater control over deferred compensation might affect their savings behavior. This paper reports on the retirement savings behavior of Washington State teachers enrolled in the state's hybrid pension plan, which includes a DC component funded by employee contributions. This research, which is the first quantitative analysis of teachers' choices of defined contribution rates, speaks to the debate around the structuring of teacher pension systems. The following questions are addressed: (1) How are discretionary retirement savings rates influenced by individual characteristics and the ability to adjust contribution rates?; (2) What can be inferred about teacher preferences for current compensation versus the present value of investment in retirement compensation?; and (3) How does the level of retirement savings compare under traditional defined benefit and hybrid pension systems? To answer these questions, the authors use longitudinal pension plan data from Washington State, where public school teachers who enroll in the state's hybrid pension plan can choose from a menu of contribution rates.

In this paper we report on research examining the revealed preferences of teachers in Denver Public Schools who were given the opportunity to select between remaining on a traditional salary schedule or opting in to one of the nation's highest profile pay reform systems, Denver's Professional Compensation System for Teachers. The incentive structure creates differential earnings risk for teachers according to their experience and measured effectiveness as well as their staffing assignment and school. We find that teachers are generally responsive to the eligibility criteria, but many teachers who would have earned more under the new system chose not to participate. Survey evidence suggests that teachers' notions of fairness and confusion about the structure of the new system may have contributed to these decisions. The following are appended: (1) ProComp Program Information; and (2) Survey Details.