The inclusion of young children with disabilities has remained a function of the Head Start program since its inception in the 1960s when the United States Congress mandated that children with disabilities comprise 10% of the Head Start enrollment (Zigler & Styfco, 2000). Standardized, norm-referenced tests used to identify children with…

The Multicultural Education Quick Assessment Test (QAT), an abbreviated instrument for administrators, staff, parents, community members, and/or students who want to determine how their district is doing in multicultural education, is presented in this paper. An introduction discusses the importance of multicultural education. Instructions are…

Principles of program evaluation research are outlined so that bilingual education program coordinators can conduct methodologically acceptable program evaluations. The three basic principles of evaluation research are: identification of the program participants, definition of the program intervention, and assessment of program effectiveness.…

The dissemination of successful educational innovations has long been a strongly supported policy in educational settings. Recent research developments have led to a debate as to the appropriateness of a centralized versus decentralized dissemination policy. The current research provided a test of the modified Research, Development and Diffusion…

The basic issues, problems, techniques, and history of program evaluation are reviewed, with emphasis on the evaluation of learning assistance programs. The following topics are discussed: (1) historical perspectives (origins of the evaluation process, program evaluation in education); and (2) theoretical constructs (typologies of evaluation…

This paper examines the concepts of program monitoring and program evaluation in the literature, and offers working definitions based on two dimensions of measurement: focus (what questions are addressed) and timing (how often the measures are taken). Focus can be on inputs to the program or outcomes from it; timing can be one-shot or continuous.…

This paper evaluates the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) Basic and Pilot Project Grant Programs. Among the major questions addressed in the evaluation were: What kinds of students participate in the programs, what kinds of districts and schools receive support, what are the funding patterns, how are the funds translated into services, how…

The general objective of the study was to provide useful information regarding the effectiveness of various components of the HCHT program. GRC field teams spent two weeks (a full training cycle) at each of the two centers, observing the training processes. Pre-training and post-training questionnaires were administered to trainees at each center.…

Evaluations in education often throw away important information because of a penchant for averages. Multiple regression techniques are used to estimate the average effect of policies across schools, and usually school performance is represented by the average score of its students on an achievement test. The author suggests some ways of broadening…

A scale was developed for judging the relative value of various media in teaching children. Posttest scores were partitioned into several components: error, prior knowledge, guessing, and gain from the learning exercise. By estimating the amounts of prior knowledge, guessing, and error, and then subtracting these from the total score, an index of…

This article presents an accountability system which can be used by counseling departments in educational settings. The system is based on the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) that was introduced in the early 60s. (Author)

This paper summarizes a project designed to develop and field test a guide to aid parents in selecting quality day care for their children. Field testing revealed that the guide is both reliable and useful. (Author)

This third and final article on effectiveness and efficiency in industrial training contains a number of suggestions on how to improve training effectively and describes how they are going about it in the Netherlands. (Author)

Discusses development of the six components of any sound performance appraisal program: (1) explicit job descriptions, (2) definitions of key areas of responsibility, (3) criteria for performance appraisal, (4) methods for data collection and analysis, (5) written procedures, and (6) legal review of all procedures. (PGD)

Information that describes a program's implementation and client audience can help the evaluator tailor the study to the constraints of particular settings and increase the likelihood that the evaluation can be implemented as planned. (Author/BS)