The University of South Carolina is using assessment to bring about academic change in general education at several levels: the individual student; system-wide courses; and the entire general education program. The approach uses both qualitative and quantitative data, and has enabled faculty to collaborate both across disciplines and all eight…

Portfolios are an effective way to get students to invest in their learning, and to show how students' learning improves or changes over time. This paper provides examples of portfolio assessment in teacher education programs to demonstrate that portfolios are useful assessment tools providing an ongoing database for documenting and monitoring…

The usefulness of authentic assessments as formative tools for teachers is well documented and supported. However, when educational institutions use these assessments as summative tools for evaluating programs and meeting accountability needs, several problems emerge. One set of problems relates to the difficulty of fitting authentic assessments…

Tests in social studies and integrated science given in Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Dominica were analyzed by the Organization for Co-operation in Overseas Development (OCOD) Comprehensive Teacher Training Program (CTTP) for discrimination, difficulty, and reliability, as well as other characteristics. There were 767 examinees for the…

This final report describes a 3-year federally funded project designed to conduct an analysis of the factors that contribute to the performance of high intensity problem behaviors by students with severe disabilities. The project utilized a series of five integrated studies, which involved students with severe intellectual disabilities and the…

In educational research and evaluation, a sample of subjects usually received some type of programmatic treatment. Outcome scores for these students are then compared with outcome scores of a control or comparison group. M. Lewis and H. McGurk (1972) have pointed out that there are some implicit assumptions when this approach is applied to…

The mental health counseling profession has gained increasing influence in the last 20 years. The purpose of this edited collection of articles is to chart the antecedents to, the present status of, and the future trends for this group of professionals. The book draws together historical tracings, rationales, conceptual models, and other…

This booklet, which was developed for the staff of field projects rather than for professional evaluators or researchers, provides guidelines for evaluating projects which promote activities to enhance the well-being of young children, their families, and their communities. The booklet aims to stimulate ideas and discussion, offers general…

A project developed and tested an Institutional Effectiveness Assessment Guide (IEAG) that incorporated themes and factors identified by Wardlow et al. (1992) as contributing to excellence. An interpretive design was used to enable researchers to gain input and consensus from participants of exemplary institutions regarding the institutional-level…

The Kentucky Tech Prep Evaluation system was developed to establish and maintain a database and data analysis for assessment of the effectiveness of tech prep programs in achieving specific goals and in helping schools improve cognitive and noncognitive performance as reflected in the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS)…

This books contains papers written on issues related to externally mandated mathematics tests and their influence on school mathematics. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the book, including brief abstracts of each chapter. Chapter 2 presents a summary of the overall problems associated with the need for valid information. Remaining chapters…

This study outlines and evaluates an urban school district's mentoring program in which 18 veteran teachers are selected to serve as full-time mentors for up to 10 beginning teachers or 4 persons participating in an alternative certification program. Methods of data collection included surveys and focus group interviews with mentor teachers,…

This study assessed the quality of undergraduate education at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) using student evaluations as the assessment tool. Educational quality was defined as good scores on the UCSD Course Appraisal and Professor Evaluation (CAPE) form. UCSD's CAPE is unique because students collect, compile, and make public the…

An intervention program sought to improve third- and fifth- grade students' ability to transfer learning among subject areas and to apply their learning to everyday occurrences. Surveys and interviews revealed the lack of student transference of knowledge among subject areas; teacher surveys and an interview with the curriculum director provided…

This chapter examines the potential pitfalls in evaluating the effectiveness of gifted education programs and applies recent trends in the assessment and maintenance of quality in industrial applications. Evaluators are encouraged to avoid the temptations of bad evaluation which may appear to offer simpler alternatives to complex tasks but…