Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) has been planned as an ongoing program of assessment. The first cycle of the assessment has involved two "rounds." The first round, which is covered by this report, took place over the period of January 2008-October 2013. The main features of the first cycle of…

The overall aim of this volume of essays is to honor Frank B. Murray's commitments to empirically-based quality assurance and to the development of increasingly effective systems of quality control in educator preparation programs. As the editors approached the authors with the invitation to contribute an essay, two characteristic aspects of…

The history of ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) arises in the late 1990s when the first formal procedures for quality assurance begun to stabilize on a national level. As a result of the European Pilot Projects in the field of external quality assurance during the nineties, participants felt the need for…

"The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship" examines the challenge of creating innovative and productive entrepreneurial activity in American education. In the course of exploring these challenges, the book considers a number of crucial issues and circumstances: existing "barriers to entry" that prohibit or obstruct entrepreneurial efforts; the…

Will the digital-learning movement repeat the mistakes of the charter-school movement? How much more successful might today's charter universe look if yesterday's proponents had focused on the policies and practices needed to ensure its quality, freedom, and resources over the long term? What mistakes might have been avoided? Damaging scandals…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)'s Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) provides internationally comparative data about students' reading achievement in primary school (the fourth grade in most participating countries). PIRLS also provides extensive information about the home and…

Five papers on outcomes assessment and management in health care services are presented. The papers illustrate the different stages of outcomes assessment, including identification and selection of indicators, monitoring and pooling of data, description of variations and identification of problems, analysis of variations, and feedback and results.…

This document consists of five fact sheets from the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The first fact sheet, Overview of Accreditation, provides information on the numbers of accredited institutions of higher learning in the United States and the types and numbers of accrediting organizations. The fact sheet also discusses the purposes of…

How do you judge the accuracy, reliability, and completeness of an electronic or online database? What measures do publishers and distributors employ to ensure that quality standards are met? Who is responsible for what part of the process? Eighteen contributors address these questions and more in their discussion of an important issue in today's…

An editorial and two articles on quality control in evaluation are presented. Topics covered include definition and assessment of evaluation quality and development of standards for judging quality. Programs inspections activities of the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services are discussed. (TJH)

This packet introduces some concepts in evaluation and accountability for mental health professionals in schools. The first section presents two briefs from the Clearinghouse of the Center for Mental Health in Schools. The first, "Mental Health in Schools: Quality Control, Evaluating Outcomes, and Getting Credit for All You Do," highlights the…

This collection of papers introduces the core ideas of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), as Total Quality Management is known in the field of higher education, and underscores its usefulness and relevance for higher education. Papers have the following titles and authors: "The Roots of the TQM Movement" (Warren Schmidt and Jerome Finnigan);…

The seven papers in this monograph focus on defining and assessing quality. The paper are: (1) "Reflections on Design Ideals" (E. Grady Bogue), which addresses some "governing ideals" of collegiate quality; (2) "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Investment and Quality in Higher Education" (Sven Groennings), which sees…

Five papers and an introduction discuss internal evaluation (IE), concentrating on the various sources of authority for IE and ways of enhancing IE authority. The roles of internal evaluators, conflicts in the evaluation process, and evaluation in a state education agency are reviewed. (SLD)