This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Organizing for Learning Improvement: What It Takes (Andrea M. Pope and Keston H. Fulcher); (2) Editor's Notes: The Leadership Imperatives for Assessment Excellence -- Imperative #2, Attracting and Retaining Talent to Support Assessment Excellence (Stephen P. Hundley);…

Given the proportion of young children experiencing disadvantages in achieving optimal health due to inequities related to race, place, and income, there is increasing attention to developing effective early childhood (EC) systems. As EC leaders embrace methods such as collective impact in driving systems change, there is a growing recognition…

From my personal point of view, the role of a program evaluator is to gather information about the thoughts and experiences of individuals impacted by the program and to use the findings to inform program improvement. However, participants in the evaluation may be reluctant to share their full thoughts due to factors such as power imbalances and a…

Increasing community awareness and knowledge about environmental problems is the primary goal of environmental education. This study explores the best practices of the Youth for Environment in Schools--Organization (YES-O) in selected schools in the National Capital Region, Philippines. A qualitative study involving interviews and focus group…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on challenges faced by longitudinal quantitative analyses of school improvement processes and offers a systematic literature review of current papers that use longitudinal analyses. In this context, the authors assessed designs and methods that are used to analyze the relation between school…

This article offers a case example of how experimental evaluation methods can be coupled with principles of design-based implementation research (DBIR), improvement science (IS), and rapid-cycle evaluation (RCE) methods to provide relatively quick, low-cost, credible assessments of strategies designed to improve programs, policies, or practices.…

Job Corps is the largest and most comprehensive education and job training program in the United States for young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school and are not working. To deepen the Job Corps program's ability to generate and use evidence to improve the labor market trajectories of eligible young people, this report discusses ways Job…

(1) Background: Programmatic assessment optimizes the coaching, learning, and decision-making functions of assessment. It utilizes multiple data points, fit for purpose, which on their own guide learning, but taken together form the basis of holistic decision making. While they are agreed on principles, implementation varies according to context.…

Systems of accountability are "second order" ways of using evidence of the standard to which "first order" tasks are carried out for a great variety of purposes. However, more accountability is not always better, and processes of holding to account can impose high costs without securing substantial benefits. At their worst,…

Despite growing evidence about the significance of Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs, public investment has been relatively low, resulting in slower expansion of evidence-based ECD programs. This dissertation consists of three essays on conducting and using economic evaluation methods to scale up early childhood education and development…

Teacher education program evaluation is one of the most recent research areas under development. One of the main reasons for the interest in this issue is the need for accountability of these teacher preparation programs in order to show evidence of high-quality teacher preparation (Wilson, 2014). In fact, according to Karimnia and Kay (2015) and…

Teacher appraisal (TA) or teacher performance appraisal (TPA) has assumed a central importance in educational systems and reforms worldwide, contributing to the improvement of teaching practices, and therefore it is considered an essential factor for teachers' early training, teachers' professional development, school management, and promotion of…

The purpose of this research was to document the extent to which Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)-accredited business schools have implemented strategies to improve students' ability to achieve program learning objectives. Assessment of academic programs is increasingly important at AACSB schools. Compliance with…

The Wisconsin School Violence and Bullying Prevention Study, funded by the National Institutes of Justice (NIJ), was a two-year case-control study in 24 Wisconsin middle schools (11 experimental; 13 control) seeking to understand the impact of a comprehensive bullying prevention program on bullying victimization rates. Participating schools'…

The emphasis of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) on improving student learning through Assurance of Learning (AOL) makes faculty involvement in the process at AACSB accredited schools important. This study examines the attitudes of accounting and economics faculty at AACSB accredited institutions toward the AOL…