Portfolios have been employed for years as evidence of many abilities (e.g., one's best drawings, one's teaching ability). The portfolio allows the individual the opportunity to demonstrate not only his/her best work, but improvement in his/her work. The chair of the Psychology Department at Shenandoah College initiated a portfolio program as a…

The Multiphased Need Assessment for Program Decisions (MAP) was designed to inform decision makers of a large urban school district concerning the need for early childhood programs in the community. The goals were to indicate the types of programs desired by the community; to bring together public school preschool experts; and to coordinate…

Noting that most writing across the curriculum programs have been dominated by the thinking of members of the English or composition departments, this paper describes the program developed at Loyola College (Maryland), which involved collaboration between writing specialists and content area teachers. The paper first describes the Loyola…

The inservice program described here provides workshop participants with background theory on young children's outdoor gross motor play, outdoor program design, playground apparatus, and alternative methods for providing gross motor experiences for young children. A brief description of the study's purpose and hypotheses is provided in Chapter I.…

Current practice in educational program evaluation was examined through analyses of 232 reports submitted, from 1980 to 1983, by institutions seeking approval for their programs from the U.S. Department of Education's Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP). The JDRP reviews these reports to determine whether educational programs have demonstrated…

A framework is presented that relates concepts of audit reliability to the uses of information gathered from a discrepancy program audit of Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title IV-C programs in Florida. Three issues are addressed: (1) the meaning of reliability in relation to the audit process; (2) the importance of reliability of auditor…

An evaluation of the Learning Resource Center, a Title I diagnostic/prescriptive learning program designed to provide help for students with extreme learning difficulties in 26 nonpublic schools, is discussed in this paper. The first part of the paper is a synopsis of the program evaluation, including a summary of findings and subsequent…

This paper presents an evaluation of both process (program content) and outcome (effects on children) of a day care center and emphasizes the importance of considering process variables in order to understand program results. Subjects for the study were 25 control children who were not attending a preschool program, 25 children who attended the…

This paper presents a discussion of evaluation methods which can be used in preschool programs and emphasizes the importance of considering both outcome and process variables. Emphasizing the limitations of research which utilizes only outcome measures, the paper focuses on the benefits of an analysis of ongoing processes and interactions within…

A statistical definition of information utilization for policy making decisions and an evaluation impact test to determine its occurrence are proposed. A univariate time series analysis is used to identify the internal trend for a given policy output variable and to control its effect. Two problems are identified in implementing an evaluation…

The Content Area Learning/Reading Project at the Cosgrove Junior High School in Spencerport, New York, was initiated in the fall of 1979. The goals of the project were to foster effective instruction in all classrooms and to promote instruction based on sound principles and practices as indicated by research and by review of successful content…