In this wide-ranging interview with Educational Leadership, Stanford University Professor of Education Linda Darling-Hammond discusses the kind of preparation and support new teachers need to survive their critical first years in the classroom. Among her central recommendations are more intensive mentoring that lasts through the first year of…

Professionals with specialized training are not the only ones capable of evaluation. Increasingly evident is the skillful use in curriculum evaluation of a variety of qualitative methods by interested people. (Author/MLF)

Using short-term pilot programs to evaluate textbooks can lead to unreliable results and interfere with effective education. Alternative methods for evaluating textbook-based programs include obtaining documented analyses of competitors' products from sales agents, visiting districts using programs being considered, and examining publishers' own…

Pellicer claims that personal interviews for selecting teachers can be made more reliable by using a structured approach. In response, Muller agrees that the structured interview is better than informal procedures, but states that the instrument used must be the product of careful research. (Author/MLF)

Ralph Tyler answers questions about his work in educational evaluation during the past 50 years and identifies the major problems in education today as educating disadvantaged children, improving the transition of youth into constructive adult life, and rebuilding the total educational environment for children. (MLF)

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

The core of adversary evaluation is the existence of opposing viewpoints, not adherence to existing formats for presenting them. Suggests that evaluators develop adversary methods more appropriate for education. (Author/MLF)

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

A combination of methods--portfolios, direct observation, assessment centers, and better tests--can compensate for one another's shortcomings and reflect the richness and complexity of teaching. (Author/TE)

Classroom assessments fall into three categories--summative, diagnostic, and formative. Summative assessment occurs at the end of a unit or course of study and is therefore an insufficient tool to maximize student learning. Diagnostic and formative assessments, on the other hand, offer descriptive feedback along the way. In light of these…

Argues that overreliance on standardized tests contributes to the deterioration of educational standards, teacher passivity, and lack of student involvement in academic studies, thus undermining democratic education; lists several alternatives to standardized testing. (MCG)

The rewards and sanctions accompanying performance-based pay and promotion programs will not be valued or given credibility as long as teacher evaluations are not approached professionally. The effect of treating teachers as bureaucrats or professionals, the limits of bureaucratic evaluation, and the demands of professional evaluation are…

The Annehurst Curriculum Classification System (ACCS) identifies curriculum materials compatible with student learning characteristics. The development of the ACCS and its use in Annehurst School in Westerville (Ohio) are described. The system originator explains how schools are using it and what researchers have discovered about the quality of…

Curriculum reform should recapture meaning in education, return childhood to children, and emphasize exploratory activity and analogic cognitive processes. (Author/MLF)

Although Alfie Kohn is a first-rate thinker, his article in the same "Educational Leadership" issue confuses adopting Total Quality Management methods with intelligently adapting them. Kohn wrestles too hard with the "worker/student" metaphor and wrongly disparages Deming's emphasis on data and performance. Schools can definitely benefit from…