Evaluation of professional learning illuminates the interactions that occur in the implementation of planned learning experiences and the necessary supports designed to improve professional practice and its effects on students. It investigates how a set of actions designed to achieve defined short- and long-term outcomes occur over time and how…

Evaluation occurs within a specific context and is influenced by the economic, political, historical, and social forces that shape that context. The culture of evaluation is thus very much embedded in the culture of accountability that currently prevails in public sector institutions, policies, and program. As such, our understanding of the…

States, districts, and schools all across the United States are busy developing or implementing teacher evaluation systems. One can trace this flurry of activity to a variety of reports and initiatives that highlight two failings of past efforts: (1) Teacher evaluation systems have not accurately measured teacher quality because they've failed to…

This article addresses the leadership preparation line of inquiry developed in the past decade by the University Council for Educational Administration/Learning and Teaching in Educational Leadership Special Interest Group Taskforce on Evaluating Leadership Preparation Programs, and it particularly addresses the series of survey instruments…

Internationalization is possible, but the objectives need careful consideration. It is noted that the majority of countries do not have any form of test quality procedure and that only a small number have reviews, registration, certification, or some combination of these approaches. Internationalization could provide benefits at the least by…

Good evaluation requires that evaluation efforts themselves be evaluated. Many things can and often do go wrong in evaluation work. Accordingly, it is necessary to check evaluations for problems such as bias, technical error, administrative difficulties, and misuse. Such checks are needed both to improve ongoing evaluation activities and to assess…

Evaluations that combine social science and law have tremendous potential to illuminate the effects of governmental policies and yield insights into how effectively policy makers' efforts achieve their aims. This potential is infrequently achieved, however, because such interdisciplinary research contains often overlooked substantive and…

As states and communities invest in initiatives to improve the quality of early care and education, the measurement of quality is becoming more widespread and the importance of measuring quality well is gaining increasing attention. Within the broad context of interest in improving quality, this report seeks to differentiate among a number of…

Measures assessing the quality of children's environments and interactions in nonparental care settings were developed originally for use in child care research and as self-assessment tools for practitioners. Within the last decade, these measurement tools have moved into the public policy arena, where they are now used to make programmatic…

Teacher evaluation has emerged as a major focus for reform at the highest levels of education policymaking, and for good reason. Most evaluations are based on scant evidence of actual effectiveness, produce inflated ratings, and provide teachers with little useful feedback. This paper offers policymakers and practitioners important "lessons…

This chapter discusses the Association of American Colleges and Universities' (AAC&U's) Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project, which aims to demonstrate that faculty across the country share fundamental expectations about student learning on all of the essential learning outcomes deemed critical for student…

Corporate universities have developed a variety of useful and creative methods for mission-specific evaluation. (Contains 3 figures.)

This report summarizes conclusions from previous reports and makes explicit comparisons between assessment approaches. The report is organized in four sections under the headings: Design, Content Analysis, Costs, and Analysis of Technical Quality. The first section (Design) describes salient characteristics of each assessment approach, the…

In their constant groping toward achievement standards, the high schools of this country have developed what is known as "cooperative testing." This development is not recent. Cooperative testing dates back further than the standardized testing movement itself. For instance, it has been customary for about 50 years in New York and in…

Value-added modeling (VAM) to estimate school and teacher effects is currently of considerable interest to researchers and policymakers. Recent reports suggest that VAM demonstrates the importance of teachers as a source of variance in student outcomes. Policymakers see VAM as a possible component of education reform through improved teacher…