This document is intended to assist State Education Agency (SEA) and Lead Agency (LA) staff and technical assistance providers in designing a meaningful evaluation for the State Performance Plan (SPP)/Annual Performance Report (APR) improvement activities. It provides: (1) information about the relevance of evaluation in the context of improvement…

Over the past 20 years, home visitation has emerged as the flagship program through which many states and communities are reaching out to new parents.The presence of bills to advance home visitation in Congress and in state and local legislatures, and the fact that several states and counties are moving forward with comprehensive plans and…

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…

The deluge of early child development research over the past 20 years has sparked an unprecedented public interest in the first years of children's lives. Research indicates that quality early education promotes the overall development of a healthy child. The Desired Results System, a standards-based accountability initiative of the California…

When procedures for developing recommendations are integrated into evaluation methods, it is easier to produce useful recommendations for program improvement. (RB)

Asserts that efforts to improve student learning must be tied to ongoing evaluation and assessment, and offers tips on conducting this evaluation. (EV)

Asserts that pursuing use as the defining goal of evaluation can distort the allocation of evaluation resources and reduce the contributions of evaluation to broader social goals, such as social betterment. Pursuing use can result in an overemphasis on evaluations oriented toward program improvement at the expense of assessment of worth and other…

Since the first child care Quality Rating System (QRS) was implemented in Oklahoma 11 years ago (in 1998), 16 additional statewide systems have been launched and numerous states are piloting or developing a QRS (Zaslow, Tout, & Martinez-Beck, forthcoming). As QRS stakeholders across the nation look ahead to the next decade, it is important to take…

With a focus on the use of technology when evaluating programs for Aboriginal people, this article explores the possibility of using visual and oral computer technology to enhance the incorporation of Aboriginal worldviews in program evaluation. The author situates Aboriginal worldviews, including methods of communication and transmission of…

This manual is designed to benefit those interested in the improvement of small programs, focusing on techniques used to check on a program's goal achievement. A small program is defined, for the purpose of this manual, as one that affects a limited number of students (less than 100) and is taught by a limited staff (5 or less) with limited or no…

Presents a systematic process for performing an analysis of program failure in adult education, including ways to identify the type of failure and questions designed to determine its cause. (SK)

Summarizes major concepts and approaches of the Evaluation Training Consortium project, showing how they relate to evaluation in the human resources development context. (CT)

Developed method for empirically evaluating functioning of peer-based alcohol abuse prevention organization. Used results to design intervention to improve organization's functioning by increasing student control, enhancing cohesiveness, and providing training in leadership skills and alcohol use. Reassessment one year later indicated that…

The research's purpose was to examine how exemplary community college study abroad programs assisted student participants in acquiring global competence. Three research questions were explored: (1) What issues need to be anticipated when planning a study abroad program for community college students in order to effectively incorporate…

Assessment, particularly formative assessment, is critical to knowing how a student is performing academically and how best to support that student. Teachers, especially new teachers, need ongoing support in developing and using both summative and formative assessments as an integral part of their instructional practice. Written collaboratively by…