Scores on annual statewide achievement tests can provide parents, students, educators, and policymakers with valuable information--but only if students participate. This issue brief provides the background about recent increases in (and efforts to expand) the number of students opting out of statewide assessments, describes the information and…

IES is the primary research, evaluation, and statistics arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Established through the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA), the Institute's mission is to expand fundamental knowledge and understanding of education and to provide education leaders and practitioners, parents and students, researchers, and…

For RCTs of education interventions, it is often of interest to estimate associations between student and mediating teacher practice outcomes, to examine the extent to which the study's conceptual model is supported by the data, and to identify specific mediators that are most associated with student learning. This article develops statistical…

In 1989 the National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education appointed a National Migrant Education Evaluation Committee to plan the development and implementation of a uniform nationwide migrant education needs assessment and evaluation system (MENAES). This report summarizes the committee's activities and recommendations. The…

There are four steps in obtaining test data, each requiring planning and decision-making: assembling students, administering tests, scoring, and recording scores. In assembling students, two cautions are in order. First, for norm referenced tests, students in the treatment group should take the test at the same time of the year as the students in…

Progress made on the development of a plan for evaluating the cost performance and educational benefits of the TICCIT and PLATO projects is summarized in this annual report. The basic focus of the first section of the report, Cost Analysis, is to provide answers to the fundamental question of how much these two CAI methods cost compared with some…

The purpose of this paper is to outline and explain the evaluation system used by the Rhode Island Department of Education to measure the effectiveness of compensatory education programs. An exposition of how relevant background, program and financial information is collected is presented. In addition, a delineation is made of the methods…

This technical report details the testing results and analyses supporting the evaluation findings related to the Austin (Texas) Independent School District (AISD) minimum competency graduation requirements. The graduation competency status of all AISD students in grades 8 to 12 are documented. The report provides additional information on the data…

Interim results of the American Institutes for Research study on the impact of the ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program imply that certain inferences can be made about the program, inferences which are unjustifiable. By providing only statistical averages on a national sample, the report does a serious disservice by failing…

This paper is one of a group that describes the research methodology for an evaluation of individually guided education (IGE) in American elementary schools. The paper covers the first phase activities from solicitation of participants (April 1977) through preparation of final data tapes for the structural equations analysis (September 1978).…

Covered in the assessment are 128 school systems having contracts for Consumer and Homemaking Education with the Division of Vocational and Technical Education (Illinois) and meeting at least one of four criteria for qualifying as disadvantaged. The evaluation followed the guidelines of the Information Based Evaluation Model (IBE) which addresses…

This volume summarizes the results of the evaluation of the Austin (Texas) Independent School District 1981-82 State Compensatory Education Program. This technical report is organized into eight appendixes. Each appendix reports the information collected by a specific measure. Each appendix consists of (1) an instrument description, (2) purpose of…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the workshops, collect data to further enhance the programs, and determine the job satisfaction of the participants. The study involved 154 participants in nine 1970 Industrial Arts Curriculum Project (IACP) summer workshops for construction teachers. An achievement test, the Minnesota…

A new Joint Comprehensive Evaluation System for the assessment of 15 different federal programs has been developed by the U.S. Office of Education. In this system these diverse program services will be thought of as resources available to meet the needs of critical target groups. Using this approach, a set of nine crucial questions that need to be…

The Bilingual Education Evaluation System was developed to help local bilingual education projects overcome evaluation obstacles and design sound, useful evaluations within the constraints of available funding and with responsiveness to current federal legislation and regulations. The evaluation system proposed involves a process component, an…