An aspect of assessment which has received little attention compared with perennial concerns, such as standards or reliability, is the role of judgment in marking. This paper explores marking as an act of judgment, paying particular attention to the nature of judgment and the processes involved. It brings together studies which have explored…

Race to the Top represented a new paradigm in federal education. Instead of spreading relatively modest dollars evenly across all jurisdictions through funding formulas--as virtually all federal education funding has been and continues to be spent--a small number of successful states received all of the available funding, and in turn made it…

In this chapter, the authors review the literature on partnership evolution to offer strategies for developing collaborative evaluator-client relationships. They begin with a brief introduction to partnerships and their approach to client relationships. A synthesis of the literature on partnership evolution is provided and applied to the…

An interview with Michael Scriven describes his thoughts and contributions to educational evaluation, the evolution of his career, and his current concerns and projects. (MH)

Studied whether special education placement decisions made by teams are superior to those made by individuals. The investigation was conducted in Puerto Rico to determine the benefits of the cooperative group process. Results indicated that teams generated significantly less variability (i.e., errors) than did the same specialists acting…

The Formative Evaluation and Heuristic Research (FEHR) PRACTICUM, a computerized game, gives practical experience in such program evaluation tasks as problem definition, operationalizing objectives, field study, budgeting, proposal writing, data analysis, and interpretation--without the expense and time commitments required by most research. The…