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One may receive the most benefit from an evaluation of an educational program or the performance of a teacher if the evaluation process is approached from a Total Quality Management (TQM) point of view. Under the philosophy of TQM, the purpose of any evaluation process is to provide feedback for the continual improvement of the educational process that is being evaluated. In the process of obtaining this feedback, the evaluator must be cognizant of two concepts that are basic to the TQM philosophy. First, an educational program or the work of a teacher can be viewed as a system. Second, since every system is impacted by numerous factors, any outcome variable of the system will experience variation. The implication of these two concepts is that an educational evaluator must be able to separate the impact of a change in an educational system from the noise of that system. This paper discusses how an evaluator can increase the ability of an individual values chart to separate a signal in an outcome variable, a signal caused by a change in the educational program or in the teacher's pedagogical practices, from the normal variation found in that variable when the chart is used in conjunction with the Western Electric Zone tests. In an individual values chart, the outcome variable is plotted on a chart in which the time factor and the outcome variable are placed on the X axis and Y axis respectively. The Western Electric Company has proposed four statistical control detection tests to be used in conjunction with control charts to increase the chances of detecting such a signal. (Contains two tables, three figures, and nine references.) (Author/SLD)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert