Educational technology products offer potentially effective means of supporting teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms. But for any given instructional need, there are likely to be numerous product options available for purchasing. What can school districts do to help ensure that good selections are made? In a recent, comprehensive study of…

This guide was created to help district leaders understand the benefits and drawbacks of the four-day school week, assess their district's readiness to make the switch, and evaluate the results of implementing the new schedule. This guide begins with an overview of common goals and outcomes for the four-day school week. It then provides a set of…

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the numbers of children identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) continues to rise. In North Dakota, the percentage of students identified with an ASD has increased from 1.9% of the total population of students with disabilities in 2004 to 6.2% of that same group in 2013-14.…

Generally recognized as the standard work in its field, "Behavioral, Social, and Emotional Assessment of Children and Adolescents" provides a comprehensive foundation and guide for conducting conceptually sound, culturally responsive, and ecologically oriented assessments of student social and emotional behavior. It is aimed at graduate…

The purpose of this paper is to inform the community about teacher appraisal methods in the School District of Philadelphia, outline the difficulties of the current system, and suggest approaches that would strengthen the teacher appraisal process. The authors gathered their information over three months in mid-2009 from multiple sources:…

This resource guide and the appendices are intended to help boards of trustees design a self-evaluation process that meets specific board needs and cultures. The information should help boards determine the approach they will use, which criteria will provide the best information for the board, who will be asked to evaluate the board, and how the…

This article describes the use of structured interviews to obtain information on which to base hypotheses about the functions of students' behavior disorders and the effectiveness of alternative interventions to teach new behavior. Phases and purposes of the structured interview are illustrated with several examples. (DB)

Recent research illustrates the increasingly important role of the school principal. As a result, procedures for selecting principals have also become more critical to rural school districts. School systems, particularly rural school districts, are encouraged to adopt systematic, rational means for selecting administrators. Such procedures will…

The Reflective Appraisal of Programs (RAP) approach allows county extension staff (in cooperation with volunteer leaders, specialists, and district staff) to obtain systematic evidence on results that participants perceive to have occurred in the months or years following their involvement in an extension program. Simpler than a…

This document is the fifth volume in a set of five Career Education Measurement Handbooks intended to help local education personnel in measurement and evaluation. Divided into seven chapters, this handbook is designed to provide practical guidelines for using observational techniques to take readings of the feelings, perceptions, and reactions of…

Six steps in the ecological assessment model are described, from setting goals to developing a learning plan, and factors such as the physical milieu and classroom patterns are considered. Methods and sources of ecological assessment data are reviewed. (CL)

Several ideas for questions and settings for interviews are presented. It is noted that although subtraction is used as an example in each case, most of the material can be easily adapted to the other basic operations. Many problems are noted with standard diagnostic tests and use of them is discouraged. (MP)

Skillfully interviewing students can elicit useful information about the quality of the educational program. (JM)

The paper reviews three main approaches for specifying behavior in a psychological assessment (interview, observation, and client self-report) and examines the place of behavioral assessment in the total field of assessment. (CL)

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the fourth in the kit, explains the basic assumptions underlying qualitative procedures, suggests evaluation situations where qualitative designs are useful, and provides guidelines for designing qualitative…