Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) grants help states and communities improve early childhood systems to support child development, equitable access to quality services and supports, and family well-being. Truly interdisciplinary, ECCS promotes cross-sector systems change initiatives that focus on integrating health care, mental health,…

The articles in this special issue discuss efforts to improve academic reading outcomes for students and ways to achieve high implementation fidelity of promising strategies. At times the authors discuss if--and how--strong fidelity is associated with strong outcomes and potentially even impacts (the difference between program and control group…

This article investigates the participating students' evaluation of a teacher training seminar about heterogeneity in the classroom at Bielefeld University, Germany. The evaluation made use of a short questionnaire and an end-of-term test of the students' knowledge on the subject matter. The questionnaire is tested for objectivity, reliability,…

Preschool classrooms generate a host of data that can be used to inform program improvement. This article suggests ways to document child-level data and mentoring protocols in a way that makes the information usable to teachers and can positively influence child outcomes.

Accreditation in higher education institutions continues to be regarded as the seal of collegiate quality even while questions have been raised about its effectiveness and what the process accepts as evidence of improved student learning. As a result, many regional accrediting agencies are requiring higher education institutions to implement…

Measurement in early childhood is an increasingly large-scale endeavor addressing purposes of accountability, program improvement, child outcomes, and intervention decision making for individual children. The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure relevant to intervention decision making for infants and toddlers, including response to…

This document supplements the advice given in "How good is our school?" (HGIOS)--third edition and "The Child at the Centre"--second edition which set out comprehensive quality frameworks and provide helpful advice on the process of improvement through self-evaluation. In particular, this document provides advice on the…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

Policy decision makers, early educators, and early interventionists face numerous challenges as they develop and implement statewide accountability systems to evaluate and improve children's early intervention and early childhood special education outcomes. Kansas was an early adopter of the Child Outcomes Summary Form (COSF) developed by the…

This paper presents a rationale and process for a comprehensive program review. Starting from the essential step of determining desired student outcomes from an undergraduate program through the program review process, the paper helps the reader seeking to develop or revise a current program review. It is hoped that the paper will illustrate the…

A comprehensive model for planning and evaluating secondary vocational education programs in Georgia was developed to assist the state's vocational supervisors and directors in planning and improving vocational programs so as to make them more effective in enhancing students' basic and employability skills. The model is based on the following…

This monograph summarizes outcomes of a forum addressing strategies to improve special education program evaluation efforts and orient policymakers, administrators, and advocates to the benefits of program evaluation as an integral part of program improvement. The forum also addressed barriers restricting evaluation of program effectiveness…

A project was conducted to develop a model for evaluating specialized and traditional programs in marketing and distributive education. The project included a review of literature containing information regarding the points of view expressed by advocates of the specialized, traditional, and middle-of-the-road approaches to program planning in…

The Education Amendments of 1976, Public Law 94-482, which revised the Vocational Education Act (VEA) of 1963, introduced major new requirements for the evaluation of federally funded vocational education programs. This paper describes the activities stimulated by these evaluation requirements and shows how evaluation results are used to revise…

Higher education is influenced significantly by regional and disciplinary accrediting organizations. Regional accrediting organizations accredit entire institutions, while disciplinary accreditors approve programs within those institutions. All accrediting organizations require institutions and programs to examine their educational effectiveness…