Signed into Law on January 8, 2002, the 1,180 page No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) shifted the course of public education in America. For the first time accountability was firmly placed at the center of school operations by requiring a systematic approach to achieving reform and improving all areas of school life (Wanker & Christie, 2005). As…

Despite the prevalence of student learning objectives (SLOs) in teacher evaluation systems throughout the United States, research on the validity of student and teacher SLO scores used for high-stakes decisions is lacking. For this reason, this dissertation is comprised of two chapters that examine student and teacher-level SLO performance data…

This quantitative study investigated the relationship between teacher dispositions, subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and reasons that school principals recommend non-renewal of teachers' contracts. Nearly 2,000 school principals in 13 states completed an emailed survey. In deciding whether to non-renew a teacher contract,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical comparison of two measures of school success -- a value-added assessment system and the federally-mandated system of adequate yearly progress (AYP) -- to identify highly effective urban schools in the USA and to explore the predictive relationship between evidence-based decision-making…

Teacher preparation programs (TPPs) are where prospective teachers gain a foundation of knowledge about pedagogy and subject matter, as well as early exposure to practical classroom experience. Although competence in teaching, as in all professions, is shaped significantly by on-the-job experiences and continuous learning, the programs that…

There is a growing disillusion with social science evaluation and the role it has played in the conduct of massive social programs. In retrospect, it appears that the social science evaluations of the past decade were undertaken with impossibly high ambitions and relied upon restrictive assumptions concerning the functions that evaluation serves…

This supplementary report identifies and provides individual descriptions and reviews of 71 retirement forecasting models. Composed of appendices, it is intended as a source of more detailed information than that included in the main volume of the report. Appendix I is an introduction. Appendix II contains individual descriptions of 32 models of…

To enable decision makers to become more aware of the levels of confidence that can be placed in the results of particular computerized decision models, methods for establishing confidence levels are discussed. The U.S. General Accounting Office has developed criteria and review procedures for evaluating computerized policy analysis models.…

Evaluability assessment is a descriptive and analytic process intended to produce a reasoned basis for proceeding with an evaluation of use to both management and policymakers. It was jointly developed by the members of the program evaluation group of the Urban Institute between 1968 and 1978. The approach begins by obtaining management's…

This paper describes a decision-theory-based procedure for compensatory education student selection that will increase the informational value of data available from program evaluation data collection and district information systems. The information produced by the decision theory approach bears directly on the basic question of who gets served.…

An effort is made to present a model of the R&D process which is comprehensive enough to handle the full range of events and activities which take place within it, including evaluation, and which has compatability at both macrostructural and microstructural levels of analyses. The first part of the paper focuses on the R&D process. An overview is…

The Families Involved in Schools and Community (FISC) Project was a federally funded project to develop and demonstrate the use of a model Individualized Family Service Plan process for young children with challenging needs and their families. The model emphasizes an individualized family systems perspective, informal nonintrusive assessment and…

This report describes the development and field testing of a federally funded model designed to integrate technology into the high school curriculum of students with disabilities. In this second phase of a 5-year study, six high schools located in four school districts were used to evaluate the model. The model is based on the premise that…

This guide provides line practitioners, managers, and policy makers with an orientation to the essentials of "client-centered" case management serving young people who require assistance from a variety of service institutions. It focuses on implementation of case management within the context of the federal Job Training Partnership Act…