In the quest to improve measured educational outcomes national governments across the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and beyond have instituted large-scale assessment (LSA) policies in their public schools. Controversy almost universally follows the implementation of such testing, related to such topics as: a)…

This article addresses an issue that has not been well explored in empirical research, namely whether local education agencies (districts) have an impact on student learning. We assumed that local district effects on learning would be largely indirect, mediated by how teachers work together in schools (in professional communities) and the quality…

Choosing a college is one of the first important decisions that many young adults undertake. Popular media suggests how students should find an appropriate college based on traditional practices (Hallet, 2008; Kulman, 2007), yet, many aspects of the reality experienced by new kinds of students and colleges is largely ignored in the college choice…

This article examined school counselor dispositions (e.g., general self-efficacy, counselor self-efficacy, openness to change, commitment to counseling improvement/professional development) that predict data usage among K-12 professional school counselors. For the study, 130 professional school counselors from Maryland and Virginia completed the…

Data from interviews with elementary school principals are examined for insights into the impact of administrative style on evaluation utilization. Characteristics of 23 principals' administrative styles are classified as being either "compliance" (CO) or "non-compliance" (NCO) oriented. CO principals are characterized by the following: (1)…

Sixty-five hour-long, topic-centered interviews were conducted with site-level administrators at elementary schools in a large urban school district to explore the relationships between evaluation information and other inputs into decision-making. The interviews focused on specific program-related decisions and sought to recreate the…

The ways in which principals use performance appraisal data for personal professional development, the characteristics of those who use such information, and the features of performance appraisal systems and decision contexts that are predictors of appraisal use were studied through a series of interviews at four sites (two with high appraisal…

Manpower information and projections in postsecondary education have present value in the sense that they guide today's decisions based on a view of what tomorrow's world will be like. But manpower decisions are complicated by the fact that the decision-maker, be it a government, an institution, or an individual, must also take account of how…

A procedure to relate funding decisions and project evaluations in an annual grant program for vocational education administered by a state education department (SED) is described. Objectives of the study included developing a set of predictor variables for funding decisions, and outcome variables for evaluating decisions; determining consensus…