Using data strategically to guide decisions and actions can have a positive effect on education practices and processes. This facilitation guide shows education data teams how to move beyond simply reporting data to applying data to direct strategic action. Using guiding questions, suggested activities, and activity forms, this guide provides…

Coburn and Turner (this issue) present an intriguing framework for understanding how data has come to be used in the current high accountability environments in education. In this framework, they connect various processes of data use within organizational and political contexts. Data use is presented using an ecological perspective that deepens…

Since its inception, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has been committed to the practice of documenting its statistical methods for its customers and of seeking to avoid misinterpretation of its published data. The reason for this policy is to assure customers that proper statistical standards and techniques have been observed,…

This handbook presents current explanations of how each survey program of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) obtains and prepared the data it publishes. The handbook aims to provide users of NCES data with the most current information necessary to evaluate the suitability of the statistics for their needs, with a focus on the…

Articles in this special issue suggest improvements in longitudinal program evaluation to meet the challenges of evaluation of human services programs. Contributions describe innovations in design, methods, data analysis, utilization, and interpretation of the findings of longitudinal studies. (SLD)

This paper focuses on the mechanics of assessing the impact of educational technology. The basics of program evaluation, research design, data collection and analysis, and report generation are covered to provide useful information to those responsible for program evaluation research and to decision makers, who are the usual recipients of…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

This handbook is designed to help educators understand program evaluation processes so that they will be able to carry out evaluation tasks and talk knowledgeably to evaluators about what they want to find out from a program evaluation. The book reviews the purposes and uses of evaluation to help the reader identify the scope and direction of the…

In 1981, the developers of a school-based change effort engaged researchers to conduct an evaluation study employing qualitative methodology that would provide the developers with information that could be used to improve the program. Resource constraints, short timelines, and the developers' preference for useable information encouraged…

The National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 represents a rich data source on life events experienced by a national sample of U.S. students from the time they left school until just after their thirtieth birthdays. Using this public-use source for other than educational research is discussed. (SLD)