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Acknowledgments
During the 3 months my colleagues and I spent in central, eastern, and southern Germany in1994, we encountered, with few exceptions, individuals who were eager to share theirexperience, knowledge, and insights with us. Conversations lasted anywhere from an hour toseveral hours, sometimes with follow-up appointments. The people who agreed to participatein our study represented a broad spectrum of German society in terms of ethnicity, gender,social class, educational and professional background, political affiliation, and age. Theyprovided us with a wealth of information about standards, individual ability differences,teachers’ lives, and the role of school in young people’s lives, as well as a variety of relatedtopics.We have written this book so that it can be understood by the nonspecialist. Our goal is toprovide a detailed and comprehensive treatment of four key academic and nonacademicfactors, which are of interest to U.S. policymakers. We have included references at the back of the book that can be used as a list of further reading for those who are interested inlearning more or focusing on a specific area.In addition to the participants, we wish to thank many other people who contributed to thisvolume. In particular, we would like to thank the project director, Harold Stevenson, co-director Shinying Lee, and Roberta Nerison-Low, administrative director and author of thechapter on ability differences, and the entire staff of the Center for Human Growth andDevelopment at the University of Michigan. We also wish to thank Lois Peak, U.S.Department of Education, who was the project officer who planned and monitored this CaseStudy.We are also deeply indebted to our German advisors, especially Professors Rainer Lehmann,Jürgen Baumert, Evelin Witruk, and Manfred Prenzel, Peter Martin Roeder of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin, Rolf Kuhn of the German Institute forInternational Educational Research, and Ulrich Steffens and Hans-Hebert Weiss of theInstitute for Educational Planning and School Development, for lending their expertise andlogistical assistance. We also want to express our thanks toour colleagues at the Conference of Ministers of Education in Bonn, especially ChristineWellems, as well as the principals who welcomed us into their schools, sometimes on shortnotice.The research on which this book is based was performed under contract to the NationalCenter for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, as part of the ThirdInternational Math and Science Study (TIMSS). The Case Study was conducted by the Centerfor Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan.Many people helped us by reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this book. Weespecially want to thank Robert LeVine, Harvard; the late Alba Thompson, Center forResearch on Mathematics and Science Education; Audrey Champagne, University of Albany,
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