The purpose of the "District Self-Assessment Tool" is to provide school district and community stakeholders with an approach for assessing district capacity to support a college readiness indicator system and track progress over time. The tool draws on lessons from the collective implementation experiences of the four College Readiness…

This study investigated the positive impact of a teaching practice on student learning outcomes in an online MBA program. An instructional project guideline was developed to help online students enhance their achieving required learning objectives corresponding to five categories of Bloom's Taxonomy. The course learning objectives are based on…

The debate surrounding teacher quality often fails to differentiate effectively between teacher-preparation providers. This failure also extends to distinguishing between teachers prepared in traditional campus-based accredited programs from those prepared in unaccredited campus-based programs. This paper compares assessment infrastructure and…

School leaders are critical in the lives of students and to the development of their teachers. Unfortunately, in too many instances, principals are effective in spite of--rather than because of--district conditions. To truly improve student achievement for all students across the country, well-prepared principals need the tools, support, and…

The "Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965" ("ESEA") requires that school districts provide services to higher-poverty, Title I schools, from state and local funds, that are at least comparable to services in lower-poverty, non-Title I schools. The current Title I comparability requirement allows school districts to…

Value-added measures can be used to allocate funding to schools, to identify those institutions in need of special attention and to underpin government guidance on targets. In England, there has been a tendency to include in these measures an ever-greater number of contextualising variables and to develop ever-more complex models that encourage…

Context: Rural and frontier states are significantly affected by substance abuse and poverty. The high rate of substance abuse coupled with high levels of dependence on state-funded treatment systems places a burden on rural treatment systems and makes resource allocation a central planning issue. Purpose: The goal of this study was to combine…

The Secretary of Education (Secretary) establishes requirements, definitions, and approval criteria for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (Stabilization or SFSF) program. The Secretary may use one or more of these requirements, definitions, and approval criteria in awarding funds under this program in fiscal year (FY) 2010. These requirements,…

Given the competition for limited resources at all levels of funding for correctional education coupled with public sentiment that swings between punishment of offenders and their rehabilitation, correctional education data at the program level have become more important than ever. This handbook explores the use of data in correctional education…

The theory-based evaluation approach documents the assumptions implicit in program design and points to the data required to test these assumptions. Collecting and analyzing such data through quantitative and qualitative techniques enhances understanding of the validity of the assumptions and the relevance of key program processes. This article…

Provides a detailed guide to preparing library budgets and describes several types of budgets. Steps to preparing a final document are outlined, including identifying objectives, assessing and prioritizing needs, data collection and analysis, presentation to the funding agency, and evaluation and monitoring of the final budget. (CLB)

A number of issues related to the development of evaluation methodology are discussed. These issues are as follows: the definition of the purpose, general strategies for the development of methodology, and methodological research. The evaluation methodology developed is for the purpose of providing data for decision making. Some specific…

This report delineates the data and the analytical procedures necessary for comparing educational demonstration programs. Used as a means of encouraging the introduction of new practices into the educational process, demonstration programs and their effectiveness depend, in part, on the quality of the data about the program and its availability to…

The methodological parameters of evaluative research studies help to identify a conceptualization of the phenomenon under investigation. Holistic critiques that identify the conceptual models under which the research was conducted shed light on the validity of the disparate inferences made from a number of studies of schools and school…

The Information Exchange Procedures (IEP) cost study project of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems is described and its applicability to six major research universities (MRU) is assessed in this pilot study. The IEP enables peer institutions to compare information about their resources, activities, and educational…