The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evaluates research studies that look at the effectiveness of education programs, products, practices, and policies, which the WWC calls "interventions." Many studies of education interventions make claims about impacts on students' outcomes. Some studies have designs that enable readers to make causal…

This paper examines the extent to which legitimacy affects program continuation, and focuses on the process by which programs attempt to maintain legitimate status through conformity with the larger environment. Legitimacy is defined as cultural support from a program's larger environment, such as the school district or community. An innovative…

This guide provides a brief overview of the issues involved in the validation process. It was developed for evaluators of adult education projects, such as 310 projects. The guide is organized in three sections. The first section discusses the rationale for validation. The second section describes the characteristics of validation models. The…

This report reports activities of the Regional Information Exchange (RIE) program under the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research's Knowledge Dissemination and Utilization Program. An overview compares the RIE program with a National Diffusion Network unit--the Joint Dissemination Review Panel, which also focuses on…

The second of two related pamphlets, this guide describes how to design an outcome study and outlines procedures for collecting outcome data. After an introduction that delineates the purpose of the two-part series, the pamphlet is divided into four major sections. The first section explains how to select a cost-outcome analysis. The next three…

Three studies identifying the characteristics of program submittals approved by the Joint Dissemintion Review Panel were examined. Between 1978-1985, 358 demonstration programs were submitted. For each of these years, between 51 percent and 83 percent of the submittals were approved. In this study, the submittals were reviewed on the basis of the…

This paper describes the extent to which the Gender Expectations and Student Achievement (GESA) program has been disseminated at the national level, reports the findings of a validation study conducted in a California school district, and shares recommendations for further study and future plans. GESA was designed to reduce the disparity in the…

Current practice in educational program evaluation was examined through analyses of 232 reports submitted, from 1980 to 1983, by institutions seeking approval for their programs from the U.S. Department of Education's Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP). The JDRP reviews these reports to determine whether educational programs have demonstrated…

Educational programs and evaluations which were submitted to the Department of Education's Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP), in order to be named validated programs, were studied to identify program characteristics associated with large versus small effect size. Effect size was calculated for 165 out of 232 submittals reviewed by JDRP from…

Beginning in fall 1991, Napa Valley College (NVC), in California, switched from essentially mandatory placement of incoming students to an advisory, self-selection system, where students receive course recommendations based on assessment test results. In order to evaluate the validity of NVC's assessment procedures, a study was conducted of…

This book is a collection of essays by various authors documenting the development and evaluation of Individually Guided Education (IGE), a planned attempt, involving thousands of scholars and practitioners, to produce more effective elementary schools. Part 1, "An Attempt to Restructure Elementary Schooling," consists of three chapters…

Despite their vital role in open-access, two-year colleges, remedial education efforts have increasingly come under attack by legislators and the public, who view such programs as duplicating the appropriate function of high schools, and who believe that limited state resources should be devoted to more prestigious programs. For a college to…