Today, nearly forty years after writing centers first began to proliferate, it is worthwhile to reflect on the themes that emerge from empirical material surrounding writing center assessments, for reflecting on these themes may help administrators to refine current assessment practices and scholars to redirect their research. The goal of this…

Environmental education organizations can do more to either institute evaluation or improve the quality of their evaluation. In an effort to help evaluators bridge the gap between the potential for high quality evaluation systems to improve environmental education, and the low level of evaluation in actual practice, we reviewed recent…

The authors highlight some of the findings of their forthcoming book, "Open Plan Schools: Teaching, Curriculum, and Design," which will evaluate open plan schools in England. These schools now comprise over 10 percent of all primary schools. (KC)

The National Service (NS) program links financial assistance for education to community service. Four issues of primary concern arise as policymakers and program planners move from the program's concept to the fine points of its design and implementation: (1) achieving balance among the program's conflicting goals; (2) expanding educational…

Four problems underlying the delivery of technical assistance in Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I evaluation are discussed: (1) the dual missions of facilitating the implementation of the Title I Evaluation and Reporting System and of facilitating the local use of evaluation information frequently require tradeoffs between…

Reviews the research on the effectiveness of five thinking skills training programs: Instrumental Enrichment, Philosophy for Children, Structure-of-Intellect (SOI), Problem Solving and Comprehension: A Short Course in Analytical Reasoning, and Odyssey. Compares and contrasts the content of each program and describes the relative lack of adequate…

Papers by teacher education practitioners, on the topic of evaluation of teacher education programs, with responses by evaluation experts, are presented: (1) "Teacher Education's Evaluation of Graduates: Where Are We Going and How Do We Know When We Get There?" (J. T. Sandefur); (2) "Requirements of a Data Base for Effective Program Evaluation"…

Intended for the classroom teacher, this review of first generation career education research is based primarily on Edwin L. Herr's comprehensive review and synthesis, "Research in Career Education: The State of the Art" (ED 149 177). Herr's major findings have been summarized in a list of statements. For example, two of these statements…

In this first of three volumes, issues related to the prediction of the potential effectiveness of a simulator training device are reviewed, and the methods used to analyze effectiveness are discussed. The Army, which uses simulator devices for performance based weapons training, has used a process linked to the Life Cycle System Management Model…

This collection of papers examines the current issues in urban education as suggested by on-site studies of programs in sixteen different cities between 1977 and 1980. An overview of the problems in urban education and their causes is presented in the first paper. The second paper discusses program improvement strategies and several examples of…