This guide is designed to help districts and schools evaluate reform efforts related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), including School Improvement Grants. It includes practical, how-to tips for conducting program evaluations, whether one takes a "do-it-yourself" approach or seeks outside assistance to evaluate reform…

While there is a recognized need for new and better ways to train soldiers to fight, many training programs developed in response to this need are used poorly or not at all. In part, the failure to use these training programs stems from the lack of established procedures for monitoring implementation and evaluating use. Effective monitoring can…

This new edition offers an evaluation text that ranges from identifying the primary users of an evaluation to focusing the evaluation, making methods decisions, analyzing data, and presenting findings. Both practical and theoretical, the book tells how to conduct program evaluations and why they should be conducted in the manner prescribed. Each…

Guidelines for developing an evaluation plan for a gifted education program include recognizing the reluctance to spend money on evaluation, identifying what should be evaluated, deciding when programs should be reevaluated, determining overall evaluation principles, creating the evaluation design, and designing the evaluation plan to fit a…

How academic programs might go about making evaluation more useful, thus making critical reflection more likely, is the central purpose of this book. The chapters are: (1) "The Concept of Academic Quality"; (2) "Motivation for Quality Work"; (3) "Evaluating Quality in Academic Programs"; (4) "Creating the Engaged Department"; (5) "Negotiating…

It is the purpose of this manual to present suggested steps and procedures for use by individual onsite evaluators or by the Utah State Office of Education or any other similar agency charged with responsibility for arranging or conducting onsite evaluations. Although many of the examples used in this manual are drawn from materials developed in…

Twelve specific suggestions for evaluators concerning development, presentation, and followup of improved evaluation recommendations are discussed. Offering effective recommendations requires special skills that need to be recognized, studied carefully, and passed along to practitioners and students. (TJH)

This paper outlines purposes of program evaluation and provides practical information to help individuals from a wide spectrum of backgrounds use evaluation to move their program ahead in a purposeful manner. Wisely moving ahead requires an assessment of an organization's past and present as well as an examination of its assumptions about the…

The concept of evaluation readiness complements other evaluation planning approaches. Its basic products are the formal program definition and the data inventory framework. Ways to improve timeliness, appropriateness, and use of evaluation are also discussed. (Author/GDC)

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the eighth in the kit, is divided into three sections, each dealing with an important function that quantitative analysis serves in evaluation: summarizing scores through measures of central tendency and…

This chapter addresses the problems encountered in the formative evaluation of instructional development projects and the instructional development process. Three types of formative evaluation--component, convergent, and contextual--are distinguished, and the consequences of using the wrong type of evaluation in a particular situation or project…

Following an introduction to the monograph in chapter 1, chapter 2 introduces the conceptual framework for an evaluation model as part of a 9-step continual process of program planning, feedback, and change. Chapter 3 delineates program issues in prevention evaluation discussed from the manager's perspective, including major evaluation questions…

This guide is intended for professionals, laypersons, funding agents and others involved in planning and delivering local prevention services. Chapter 1 defines prevention, and differentiates between prevention strategies and programs targeted toward individuals or to general populations. Program evaluation and evaluation research are defined and…

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the seventh in the kit, provides an overview of a variety of approaches to measuring performance outcomes. It presents considerations in deciding what to measure and in selecting or developing instruments best suited to…

Not all data for a program evaluation may be equally valuable, and costs of collection may vary when using several methods to obtain data from several sources. An approach to maximize information yield for a fixed, limited budget using a mathematical technique known as linear programming is described and generalized. (Author/CM)