The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) requires faculty from educator preparation programs to provide evidence of credential candidates' impact on K-12 student learning. However, there is a paucity of information on preparation programs' use of direct assessments of student learning to gauge credential candidate…

Performance-based accountability along with budget tightening has increased pressure on publicly funded organizations to develop and deliver programs that produce meaningful social benefits. As a result, there is increasing need to undertake formative evaluations that estimate preliminary program outcomes and identify promising program components…

Higher education experts tout learning outcomes assessment as a vehicle for program improvement. To this end the authors share a rubric designed explicitly to evaluate the quality of assessment and how it leads to program improvement. The rubric contains six general assessment areas, which are further broken down into 14 elements. Embedded within…

Teacher evaluation has emerged as a major focus for reform at the highest levels of education policymaking, and for good reason. Most evaluations are based on scant evidence of actual effectiveness, produce inflated ratings, and provide teachers with little useful feedback. This paper offers policymakers and practitioners important "lessons…

This paper presents three methodological models that can be employed in conducting follow-up studies of preservice and inservice teacher training. The needs assessment model evaluates effectiveness by the discrepancy between "what is" and "what should be." The relative gain model assesses relative pupil improvement. The process-product model of…

The 1988 Hawkins Stafford amendments to the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act required that the national evaluation and reporting system for Chapter 1 identify individual school projects in need of improvement. It is argued that the system is unsuited for this purpose, and suggestions for better indicators are provided. (SLD)

IMPACT is the District of Columbia Public Schools' (DCPS) system for assessing and rewarding the performance of teachers and other school-based staff. This system is called IMPACT because the adults serving in the DCPS have the ability to make a dramatic, positive impact on students' lives. The system is designed to help staff become more…

A curriculum guide and suggested instructional resource materials were developed for a school district program in computer literacy for kindergarten through grade 8. The program was piloted with 43 teachers in 9 elementary schools and 1 junior high school in 1984 in the Orange County (Florida) School District. A structured response questionnaire…

The Texarkana model of performance contracting consists of five major elements: (1) turnkeying of cost-effective new technology as a basic program goal, (2) use of a performance contract for instruction, (3) use of a management support contractor, (4) selection of the learning system contractor by formal competition, and (5) use of independent…

South Carolina's School Incentive Reward Program Program (SIRP) based on year-to-year gains in reading and mathematics achievement, which seemed to have face validity, was evaluated, particularly its use of the relative gains of students in only the highest grade in the school as the basis for the awards. When this requirement was relaxed so that…