The long-term goal of the State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP) and other federal and state early intervention and early childhood education initiatives is improved child and family outcomes. States play a critical role in supporting practitioners in the use of evidence-based practices to improve child and family outcomes. When practitioners…

The basic components of apprenticeships are the same today as in 1937, when the National Apprenticeship Act set the foundation for apprenticeships in the United States. Apprentices enter into a structured training program of classroom and paid on-the-job training under the guidance of a mentor. As their skills increase, so do their wages. Upon…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…

The conceptualization and measurement of education finance equity and adequacy has engaged researchers for more than three decades. At the same time, calls for increased academic accountability and higher student achievement in K-12 public education have reached new levels at both the national and state levels. Aligning these represents an…

We are at a transformative moment in education with the almost universal adoption (forty-five states, the District of Columbia, and four territories) of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). As we move from adoption to implementation of these standards across the country, the climate for educational reform has led to expectations of change that…

This article presents the authors' rejoinder to the comments of Howard Bloom, Derek Neal, and Mike Seltzer on their article. Their commentary focused foremost on the advantages and disadvantages of using Options A, B, or C in using instrumental variables in multisite trials. Of interest are the quantities one can estimate and test in each case,…

In recent years, increased focus on the effectiveness and accountability of prevention and intervention programs has led to greater government funding for the implementation and spread of evidence-based health and human service delivery models. In particular, attention has been paid to programs that require significant infrastructure investment…

A customer contact center offers academic libraries the ability to consistently improve their telephone, e-mail, and IM services. This paper discusses the establishment of a contact center and the benefits of implementing the contact center model at this institution. It then introduces a practical methodology for developing a valid measurement…

The Assessment of Campus Climate to Enhance Student Success survey (ACCESS) is a set of four questionnaires designed to elicit feedback from five campus constituencies including faculty, administration, staff, students with disabilities, and students without disabilities "to use in planning and garnering support for meaningful activities and…

Effective principals are those who boost academic achievement for all students, increase the effectiveness of their teaching staffs, and consistently take leadership actions shown to improve outcomes for students. Therefore principal evaluation systems should place 70% of their weight on the ability of principals to increase student achievement…

The capability of organizations to operate on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework is reliant on ITIL process measurements. Appropriate ITIL process measurements help ensure desired outcomes, enable corrective actions to take place prior to process failure, and direct process activities towards continuous improvement.…

As a new extension of individual quality-of-life (QOL) framework that has been widely embraced in the field of disability to affect policy making, guide service delivery, and enhance outcomes of individuals with disabilities, family quality of life (FQoL) has been increasingly recognized as an important concept in the area of family supports for…

This article summarizes critical evaluation needs, challenges, and lessons learned in translational research. Evaluation can play a key role in enhancing successful application of research-based programs and tools as well as informing program refinement and future research. Discussion centers on what is unique about evaluating programs and…

Every public university is engaged now in serious and ongoing accountability appraisal with significant time and resources dedicated to the task. The academy's commitment to accountability is real. Focusing on accountability for undergraduate education, one of several important functions of public universities satisfies a need, but it should not…

Follow-up studies are necessary for investigating the long-term, enduring, anticipated effects of bilingual education. Investigations need to be based on a recognition of their value to educational audiences, the relative merits of research issues, attention to the problem of attrition, proper selection of dependent measures, and the merits of…