Most Popular Books by Jerry West

Is Pine Lake a haven for creatures from outer space? The citizens of Shoreham are rattled by mysterious UFO sightings, but the Shoreham Detective Club is on the case. From unusual footprints in the mud to a stolen doll at school, the clues start piling up fast as The Happy Hollisters search for who-or what-is causing the panic around town.

When the Hollister family set off in the station wagon to buy a Halloween pumpkin, the last thing they ever expected was a mysterious adventure. But then they stopped to help Farmer Johnson, whose wagonful of pumpkins had tipped over, and from the old barn near the farm house came a frightening sound . . . "Ooga, ooga!" Everyone jumped. Then Pete and Pam ran to investigate, but Farmer Johnson stopped them."That's only the horn from my old car. No need to get scared." But who had blown the horn? There was no one else around.Pete caught sight of a girl in a red jacket running through the woods. When he described her to Farmer Johnson and the family, no one could imagine who she was!This is just the beginning for Pete, Pam, Ricky, and all the other members of the delightful Hollister family. They do find out who the girl is, but after they stumble onto an ancient gravestone behind the farmer's barn, they discover some large footprints in the mud and meet a strange man who is searching desperately for a certain weathervane in the shape of a golden witch!THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN WITCH is one of the most exciting adventures the Hollisters have had so far. And who would think that four-year-old Sue Hollister could be the one to solve this mystery? Well, she does solve it, and she earns a valuable reward that the whole family ends up sharing.

This report provides a portrait of children entering Head Start for the first time in fall 2009, as well as of their family backgrounds and the classrooms and programs that serve them. The report also offers comparisons across the past decade of the Head Start program to delineate trends and changes in the population served and the services provided. Data are drawn from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), which was first launched in 1997 as a periodic, longitudinal study of program performance. Successive nationally representative samples of Head Start children, their families, classrooms, and programs provide descriptive information on the population served; staff qualifications, credentials, and opinions; Head Start classroom practices and quality measures; and child and family outcomes. FACES includes a battery of child assessments across many developmental domains; interviews with children's parents, teachers, and program managers; and observations of classroom quality. In 2008, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funded Mathematica Policy Research and its partners--Educational Testing Service and Juarez and Associates--to design and conduct FACES 2009. (Contains 18 figures, 4 tables, and 61 notes.).

This methodology report provides technical information about the development, design, and conduct of the third grade data collection of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). Detailed information on the development of the instruments, sample design, data collection methods, data preparation and editing, response rates, and weighting and variance estimation is included. This report is organized into the following chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Development of Survey Instruments; (3) Sample Design and Implementation; (4) Data Collection Methods; (5) Data Preparation and Editing; (6) Response Rates; and (7) Weighting and Variance Estimation. Individual chapters contain references. (Contains 65 tables and 29 exhibits.).

This report contains resources to help researchers and policymakers review measures used in NCEE evaluations of educational interventions. The measures included in the Compendium are applicable to settings for preschool through grade 12. The Compendium discusses criteria and their importance in selecting measures for assessing intervention impacts on student, teacher, and classroom outcomes, and presents profiles or table summaries of these measures. In expectation that the information in this document will be used under diverse circumstances for varied purposes, background information is presented in report format. The materials will be most useful when used in consultation with an assessment expert. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure, 1 exhibit and 5 footnotes.) [For Volume 2, see ED511792.].