Working as a teacher educator today means working under an ever-present regulatory gaze. Accountability mechanisms, including state program approval processes, have been layered resulting in complexity. External assessments have failed to provide the data needed to support continuous improvement. There have been calls for combining external and…

America's schools were founded on the principle that a democratic nation needed informed, active, and knowledgeable citizens in order to realize the promise of democracy. Over the last 400 years, we have lost our way. Today's schools do a poor job of preparing our students to be engaged, open-minded, and purposeful participants in a system of…

It is often necessary for nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to formulate a Request for Proposal (RFP) to procure essential contracted services. This is most common when seeking the services of an external evaluator. Since most NPOs do not have internal evaluation staff, developing an appropriate RFP can be quite challenging. With limited literature…

Capitalism and education can appear like unlikely friends at first, yet for-profit educational ventures continue to grow in size and revenue year after year in the United States. How can the government-controlled (and partially funded) educational institutions capitalize upon the opportunity without modifying the mission and vision of the…

The purpose of this methodological study is to explore how well a process called "concept mapping" (Trochim, 1989) can articulate the theory which underlies a social program. Articulation of a program's theory is a key step in completing a sound theory based evaluation (Weiss, 1997a). In this study, concept mapping is used to…