Assessment is a crucial component of gifted education. Not only does it facilitate the recognition of the potential and specific needs of gifted students, it also monitors the progress and growth of gifted students, and allows for the evaluation of gifted education programs. In the present review, we synthesize the literature on assessment in…

Background: A music education program with a goal of enhancing cognitive development of preschool-aged children enrolled in local preschools is evaluated by The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. The budget for the evaluation was small, and therefore presented several challenges to the evaluation team. Purpose: Through a case study…

Significant life experience research suggests that outdoor experiences foster proenvironmental outcomes. Time spent outdoors is more frequently identified as the source of proenvironmental behavior than is education, suggesting that cognition may be less important than affect. Yet, environmental education field programs are often evaluated on…

Existing evidence on the Milwaukee Project, an early intervention effort with preschool disadvantaged children, suggests a decline of the experimental children to the level of the untreated controls in those measures, such as school reading, not under the control of the project. (DB)

Early evidence from an evaluation of the Child and Family Resource Program (a Head Start demonstration) suggests that this program influences parent-child interaction in ways that promote children's social and cognitive development. (Author)

This paper describes a Piagetian-based evaluation measure and results obtained from the use of this measure with 1260 pre-kindergarten inner-city children. The children were enrolled in a program designed to develop their readiness skills. Family income, limited educational opportunities of adult members of the family, and dependency on public…

Measures of quality are now in widespread use across states as part of quality improvement initiatives. For example, many states are currently using global measures of quality that were first developed for research and practice purposes (such as the Environmental Rating Scales) in their Quality Rating Systems (QRSs). Although global quality…

In educational research and evaluation, a sample of subjects usually received some type of programmatic treatment. Outcome scores for these students are then compared with outcome scores of a control or comparison group. M. Lewis and H. McGurk (1972) have pointed out that there are some implicit assumptions when this approach is applied to…

The cumulative impact of self contained class placement for 43 gifted students (grades 6 through 8) was assessed and compared to that of 38 gifted students in regular age-grade placement. Ss were compared across multiple goal domains relevant to gifted education (higher order cognitive skills, personal autonomy and responsibility for learning,…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for disadvantaged children. In this paper the problems of evaluating Head Start from an economic viewpoint are considered and a reanalysis of the data collected for the 1969 Westinghouse Learning Corporation--Ohio University study is carried out. An evaluation of Head Start is difficult because of…

In this volume, ESEA Title I projects related to instructional practices and student cognitive performance, carried out in Philadelphia during 1971-1972, are evaluated. The six projects in this cluster are: Class for Mentally Retarded/Emotionally Distrubed Children; English as a Second Language; Improvement of Reading Skills (Reading Skills…

Educators, researchers, and policymakers now acknowledge the importance of early childhood education for all preschool children. Unfortunately, studies have found that while most preschool children spend at least a portion of their days in care outside the home, they are not in settings of sufficient quality to produce later learning outcomes.…

This document provides information about Science Unlimited (SU), the elementary school science effort of the Pennsylvania Department of Education. (The philosophy and characteristics of SU continue the earlier Pennsylvania science program effort entitled Investigative Science in Elementary Education.) The document includes: (1) a list of SU…

The need for ongoing evaluation of physical education programs in the context of the total school curriculum is discussed, and the following objectives of physical education are identified: 1) development of attitudes toward physical activity based on individual student needs; 2) experience in physical ability; 3) knowledge about physical ability;…

The Cognitive Developmental Early Childhood program at Pennsylvania State University has formulated a program, curriculum, and evaluation system guided by Piagetian theory. The evaluation system described in this paper is a result of an intensive examination of the purposes and types of evaluation systems for their compatibility with the Piagetian…