The goal of this report is to provide a summary of the evaluation of Project Symbiosis which focused on enhancing the teaching of science principles in high school agriculture courses. The project initially involved 15 teams of science and agriculture teachers and was characterized by an extensive evaluation component consisting of six formal…

Teachers are being encouraged to use observational strategies for a variety of professional purposes in assessment and evaluation. Observation differs from just "looking" in that the personal experience of looking is transformed into a public event by the systematic recording of what is seen and by subsequent analysis and interpretation.…

The speech communication discipline seems to be stuck in status quo. The current climate of the discipline K-12 is one that is not mobilized for the future. However, a paradigm shift within the Speech Communication Association may be evolving in the creation of a model for the process for development of assessment strategies and instruments.…

Atlantic Baptist College (New Brunswick, Canada) has adopted a faculty evaluation program based on the work of a committee of administrators and faculty representatives. The program was initiated out of the administration's desire to foster academic excellence and faculty development through a more systematic evaluation procedure. The committee…

Noting that language study (one leg of the traditional English tripod of language, literature, and composition) has received mixed attention internationally and is almost forgotten in North America, this paper presents a rationale for researching language awareness and three instruments that can be used in such research. The paper begins with…

This bibliography, intended for families, lists 65 resources on assessing children for the presence of a disability. Resources are intended to ensure that all members of the Individualized Education Program team, including parents, have an appropriate base of information. Resources were published from 1983 through 1994 and are grouped into the…

Although the demand for formal evaluation of alternative schools is greater than for conventional schools, the unique characteristics of these schools make evaluation especially challenging. Use of traditional instruments and methods may yield misleading results. Evaluators must understand the issues associated with the evaluation of alternative…

This brief suggests that performance accountability offers the chance to refocus on what learners accomplish by participating in adult basic education (ABE) and to reorient every aspect of the system to achieve the best results. The 1966 Adult Education Act provides little guidance in developing performance accountability. Recent research…

This monograph reviews and synthesizes highlights from relevant writings on evaluation and suggests interpretations and applications for practitioners who plan and conduct various types of educational programs for adults. It suggests that planning and conducting effective educational programs for adults entails contributions by various…

In the early 1990s, a restructuring of the health services system of Alberta (Canada) amalgamated public health units and hospital districts into 17 Regional Health Authorities. Many of the regions have pursued community grant initiatives in addition to their regular funding, and it seemed that there would be value in comparing the experiences of…

This manual endorses and adopts the sector-assessment approach for planning and managing the allocation of educational resources. Chapter 1 presents the manual's goals. Chapter 2 describes the manual's content and information sources, explains the term "sector assessment," identifies the groups that benefit from recommendations made by…

The measurement of value added (MVA) is a powerful tool that can help British further education colleges improve student and program performance. MVA can focus on individual learners, sectional management issues, and presentation of colleges' achievements to external audiences. MVA may be used for the following purposes: improving guidance and…

Responding to calls by Missouri's Coordinating Board of Higher Education and in turn by Northeast Missouri State University, the communication faculty appointed a committee on oral communication assessment. The committee submitted to the communication faculty an assessment proposal that focused on answering the question of whether the basic speech…

As part of the process of developing an assessment system for Washington State Adult Basic Education/English as a Second Language (ABE/ESL) a review of literature was conducted, the product of which is the annotated bibliography presented here. The first section of the bibliography is a review of the materials found during the course of the…

An outgrowth of several previous projects conducted by the Illinois Literacy Resource Development Center (ILRDC), the Quality Programs Project is a collaborative effort to improve the quality of literacy services in the Chicago area. A long-term investment in quality programming at the local level, the Quality Programs Project has as its primary…