After reviewing the role of the school counselor, methods of evaluation, and criteria for measurment of effectiveness, this article provides recommendations for improving the counselor's productivity. (DS)

Media reports are rife with claims that students in the United States are overtested and that they and their education are suffering as result. Here I argue the opposite--that students would benefit in numerous ways from more frequent assessment, especially of diagnostic testing. The regular assessment of students serves critical educational and…

Discusses National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification, examining five problematic issues: lack of agreement on criteria for assessing teacher performance, slender evidentiary basis for assessment, the board's inability to authenticate or verify the accuracy of the materials received, secrecy surrounding the board's…

Australian researchers studied principals' responses to the Principal Performance Appraisal procedure. Interviews and a survey indicated principals were positive about the appraisal process, but they saw a considerable discrepancy between actual and ideal reasons for its introduction. They saw positive benefits if it focused on professional…

Explores several dilemmas facing those interested in developing processes for principal evaluation and, drawing from program evaluation practices, suggests a consumer-oriented, outcomes-based approach for evaluating principals. The article concludes with a set of criteria for assessing any principal evaluation program. (GLR)

Discusses the quality of school-level data collected as part of state accountability systems, including the reliability and validity of school-level test scores as a measure of the value added by schools to student learning, outlining ways that these data can be usefully analyzed; illustrating challenges inherent in doing so; and discussing…

Examines the principal assessment process in measuring accountability for facilitating academic improvement. The article raises several conceptual and methodological issues on developing principal assessment models, provides data on issues in the development of evaluation models for principal assessment, and presents a basic model for principal…