March 5, 1996
(Education and Training)

Department of Education and Training initiatives win international awards

Over the past year, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) recognized two initiatives of the Department of Education and Training by announcing awards in its 1995 "Excellent Publications" competition. The results of the competition were announced at the 1995 AERA conference in San Francisco and published in a recent edition of the association's newsletter.

Under the category of "Advances in Methodology", first place was awarded to Gerald Galway, Kerry Pope and Dr. Lenora Perry Fagan of the department's Division of Evaluation, Research and Planning for "The School Profile System, Handbook and Applications". This system, designed and developed in-house has been one of the cornerstones in the provision of timely information to schools and districts including a range of performance and descriptive indicators. The successful entry also included a users manual and a manual describing, for schools, an effective method of preparing school profiles.

Chris Decker, Minister of Education and Training, stated: "With the information available through this system, school staffs as a group are better able to set schoolwide improvement goals. A school profile is an important resource for the planning and management at the school level and incorporates a blend of information. The department can provide many of the demographic and performance indicators required in a school profile while information on a host of other areas can be added at the school level from observational data and other records."

Entries in this competition come from all over the world. The Department of Education in the State of Kentucky received the first runner-up award in this category.

Under the category of "Management Studies", the "Final Report of the School Operations/Student Profile Project" also captured the First Place award. Gerald Galway, project manager and Jean Tilley, senior analyst, authored the report. The study involved an assessment of the information needs of the K-12 education system and extensive evaluation of automated school information systems. About the report the minister said: "The report made a number of recommendations, now in varying stages of implementation, related to the collection and storage of student and school information. The ultimate goal of the project is to improve the way student information is collected, stored and transferred within the education system."

First runner-up in this category went to a study of school privatization completed by the San Diego Unified School District, in the United States.

"I am very proud of the work the department is undertaking in these areas," Mr. Decker commented, "This type of international recognition is evidence that these are world-class educational initiatives."

The AERA annual publication competition is a "competition for products" developed by school systems and Departments of Education. The purpose of the competition is to recognize outstanding professional achievement in the evaluation and research community.

Contact: Carl Cooper, Public Relations Director, (709) 729-0048, Fax: (709) 729-3669.