The Establishment of a Student Self-Scheduling System at Greenville High School

The purpose of this study is to explain the mechanics involved with a scheduling system which will reduce student schedule changes and promote a smoother start to the academic school year. The study will not only trace the history of self-scheduling at Effingham High School beginning in 1975 but will outline the method used to continue a similar scheduling system at Greenville High School in 1978. As a guidance counselor at Effingham High School starting in the school year of 1974, I was dissatisfied with the scheduling system. Not surprisingly, the other two guidance personnel plus most of the teaching staff did not care for the present system. The number of schedule changes were about one-third of the total enrollment of the school. As an assistant principal at Greenville High School starting in the school year of 1977, I found that the Guidance Department plus many of the teachers did not like their scheduling system. Although both scheduling systems are basically the same at both schools, my role in the promotion of self-scheduling had changed. At Effingham, the principal had to be convinced so he would speak on behalf of self-scheduling to the school board. At Greenville, I was asked by the superintendent to convince the school board of the worth of this system. The key to both approvals was convincing the school boards of the respective districts to try a new idea that is not used extentsively in a high school setting. Although colleges almost exclusively use a slight variation of self-scheduling, high schools for the most part have not adopted it. Giving a high school student this responsibility changes his attitude towards the courses he must take because he will have optional times for class and teacher selection. The pre-registration and forms that are used are similar to many high school schedules now is existence. The contruction of a schedule, if a computer is used, is still traditionally done by using a conflict matrix to try and provide as many first choices for classes as any other system. The difference comes when actual registration takes place. The students are supplied with a computer printout schedule that works plus a listing of all class times and the teachers for each section. This information is mailed approximately 10 days before registration. The registration takes place about one week before the school year actually begins. They are told in the mailing that this schedule works but if they want to change the time a given class is scheduled or the teacher that is involved, they may do so at their time of registration if room is available. Limits of seating are set so one class of a section is not overloaded. At the end of registration, all classes will be fairly balanced. Seniors go first for one-half day, then the underclassmen follow. The alphabet is rotated so no specific last name of a student will be an advantage. Each grade is divided into six sections and their sizes range from 25 to 32. A student cannot register before his assigned time but can register later. In my involment with this type of scheduling, 95% of the students or more arrive at the specific time designated. The study concludes by comparing a computerized scheduling with self-scheduling. The humanizing factor of self-scheduling will cut down on schedule changes because that is what the student had already been invited to do: change his schedule. The school year will start in better fashion because the guidance personnel are not faced with long lines for changes. Self-scheduling gives the student a responsibility to decide which hours he will take certain classes. The student, and the staff members, also become more aware of the complexities of schedule making

The effectiveness of two types of academic support services on the academic performance of black undergraduate students

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of two academic support programs on the academic performance of black undergraduate students. Data were collected, analyzed and evaluated on 89 participants representing two treatment groups and one control group. The participants were freshman and sophomores enrolled in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), Black Cultural Center (BCC) and the Education Advancement Program (EAP). The study was conducted in the 1981-82 academic school year. Two specific hypotheses were generated. It was hypothesized that students enrolled in the BCC and EAP would achieve significantly greater GPA mean gain scores than nonenrolled (control group) students. The null hypothesis was that there would be no significant difference in cumulative GPA mean gain scores performed between the two treatment groups. Data analysis showed that the alternative hypothesis was rejected. The null hypothesis of no significant difference was supported. A closer examination of data on group performance within the two treat-ment groups revealed the following: (1) sixty-one percent of the students receiving tutoring at the BCC achieved letter grades of C (2.0 and above) C+ (2.5) to A (4.0) in regular classroom courses, and (2) students enrolled in the EAP performed quite well. Seventy percent of the EAP students achieved similar GPA results for which tutoring had been rendered. Students enrolled in the BCC identified chemistry, engineering, math and biology most often as the subject areas in which they needed academic assistance. Students enrolled in the EAP identified the subject areas of math, biology, chemistry, and English. The study specifically contributed to the existing body of litera-ture in two ways. First, it offered an opportunity to investigate the academic performance of students who were performing successfully (2.0 and above) in their course work as well as students who were not performing adequately in their course work. Second, it offered an opportunity to focus on the unique characteristics and services of the BCC and EAP

Eyewitness identification: \u27I noticed you paused on number three.\u27

An eyewitness to a crime is the most damaging evidence the government can present in a criminal trial. The impact on the jury of a witness pointing to the defense table and saying “that is the man right there – I will never forget his face” is overwhelming. The prosecutor can often support the veracity of the identification by providing testimony that the witness previously identified the accused in some sort of a photo spread. If the witness is a victim, police officer or some other witness sympathetic to the government, the testimony usually goes something like this: “The officer showed me the lineup and I picked the defendant before the spread hit the table.

Eyewitness identification: \u27I noticed you paused on number three.\u27

An eyewitness to a crime is the most damaging evidence the government can present in a criminal trial. The impact on the jury of a witness pointing to the defense table and saying “that is the man right there – I will never forget his face” is overwhelming. The prosecutor can often support the veracity of the identification by providing testimony that the witness previously identified the accused in some sort of a photo spread. If the witness is a victim, police officer or some other witness sympathetic to the government, the testimony usually goes something like this: “The officer showed me the lineup and I picked the defendant before the spread hit the table.

Performance of Quality Assurance Procedures for an Applied Climate Information System

Valid data are required to make climate assessments and to make climate-related decisions. The objective of this paper is threefold: to introduce an explicit treatment of Type I and Type II errors in evaluating the performance of quality assurance procedures, to illustrate a quality control approach that allows tailoring to regions and subregions, and to introduce a new spatial regression test. Threshold testing, step change, persistence, and spatial regression were included in a test of three decades of temperature and precipitation data at six weather stations representing different climate regimes. The magnitude of thresholds was addressed in terms of the climatic variability, and multiple thresholds were tested to determine the number of Type I errors generated. In a separate test, random errors were seeded into the data and the performance of the tests was such that most Type II errors were made in the range of 1C for temperature, not too different from the sensor field accuracy. The study underscores the fact that precipitation is more difficult to quality control than temperature. The new spatial regression test presented in this document outperformed all the other tests, which together identified only a few errors beyond those identified by the spatial regression test