In this article, the author argues that student data is more than just test scores. Alex Kajitani notes that data matter because they provide crucial information to teachers that enable them to better serve their students. Teachers can use data to determine students' strengths and areas of need. The effective use of data means being able to…

"Building Institutional Capacity for Data-Informed Decision Making" is the third installment of the Cutting Edge series, which aims to help colleges engage faculty, scale successful interventions, and create a strong culture of evidence through use of data to strengthen their institutional change and student success efforts. Though the…

Highlights the important contributions of responsive evaluation's orientation to local issues and qualitative methods, but rejects responsive evaluation's relativity in favor of deliberation as a vehicle for adjudicating among competing evaluative claims. The great strength of responsive evaluation is that it helped break the intellectual…

Two forms of naturalistic evaluation have appeared within the past decade: (1) a collection of qualitative techniques that are complimentary with conventional quantitative methods; and (2) an alternative paradigm that emphasizes the negotiation of multiple socially constructed realities, interdependence of facts and values, and the emergent…

Ethnographic qualitative assessment methods can be used to evaluate gifted programs. Noted are the use of multiple tools in fieldwork, allowing an extended time span, the research as the research instrument, ethnographics research cycle, and use of both macro and micro approaches to the evaluation product. (Author/CB)

This paper presents ideas for the development and utilization of a comprehensive evaluation plan for an accelerated school. It contains information about the purposes of a comprehensive evaluation, the evaluation design, and the kinds of data that might be gathered and used. The first section, "An Approach to Evaluation: Multiple Purposes and…