The Austin Independent School District (AISD) is now in its third year of study on the effects of a new retention policy adopted in 1981-82. Reviewing the results of the first two years led to the conclusion that traditional methods of studying retention might not be the most appropriate. These evaluations have primarily focused on the impact of…

This paper examines whether the Title I/Chapter 1 tradition of leading the way in educational evaluation will continue or whether Chapter 1 will change its role by delegating decision-making authority over evaluation methodology to state and local school systems. Whatever direction Chapter 1 takes, states, school systems, and schools must be held…

The Linking Outcomes with Organizational Planning (LOOP) process, initiated in 1984 in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District (AISD) is described. Focus is on the successful conversion to on-line computer updates and the development of a training package for key staff on writing status reports. LOOP is a nine-step process for integrating…

For Texas's Career Ladder System of rewarding good teachers, teachers' performance evaluations from 1981 to 1984 were used to rank teachers in the Austin Independent School District. Significant biases were noted between raters, between years, and between elementary and secondary teacher ratings. To adjust for these biases, each teacher's raw…

The GENESYS (GENeric Evaluation SYStem) evaluation system of the Austin, Texas school system is described, and its second year of operation--1989-90--is reviewed. GENESYS is a method of streamlining data collection and evaluation through the use of computer technology. It gathers and reports the following standard information on specified groups…

Issues related to achieving adequate national norms are reviewed, and a new methodology is proposed that would work to provide a true measure of national achievement levels on an annual basis and would enable reporting results in current-year norms. Statistical methodology and technology could combine to create a national norming process that…

GENESYS is the GENeric Evaluation SYStem of the Office of Research and Evaluation, Austin (Texas) Independent School District. It is a method of streamlining data collection and evaluation for a variety of projects. GENESYS gathers data from the school system's data bases and reports the following information (characteristics and outcomes) on…

The formative report provided the Austin Independent School District personnel with information useful for planning the remaining activities for the 1973-74 Bilingual/Bicultural Project and the activities for the 1974-75 Project. Emphasis was on what had been done to evaluate the 1973-74 Project, the data which was or would be available for the…