If museums and libraries are to compete for both public and private funds in an accountability-driven environment, they must develop evaluation practices that provide the most compelling picture of the impact of their services. The two essays in this document present clear arguments for the adoption of a specific approach to evaluation known as…

The general research goal for this study was to determine whether the decision to launch guided self-study as a global concept for university teaching at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Flanders, Belgium) has had any impact on the evaluation of educational quality at the level of individual programs. The main hypothesis was that departments…

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), all public school districts, campuses, and the state are evaluated annually for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The Texas AYP plan meets the requirements of the NCLB, maintains the integrity of the Texas assessment program, and provides a mechanism for evaluating district and campus AYP in 2003. Following…

This Critical Issue Bibliography (CRIB) sheet focuses on performance indicators in higher education. Performance indicators are concrete pieces of information about a condition or result of public action that is regularly produced, publicly reported, and systematically used for planning, monitoring, or resource allocation. The resources in this…

The Distance Learning Policy Laboratory of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and many states and regional organizations are coming to a consensus on the principles and goals that should shape distance learning policies. In the case of quality assurance, the SREB believes there are four guiding principles that states should follow.…

A program evaluation (of Scholastic's Read 180 program) was recently submitted to administrators at the public middle school where the author/educator teaches. The evaluation was written in a reflective state regarding the nature of evaluations and her role in the construction of this particular evaluation. It recalls the M. C. Escher lithograph,…

This resource guide describes approaches to evaluating the mediation of special education conflicts, especially the use of participant questionnaires in evaluating mediation programs. Section 1 establishes the evaluation context and lists 10 action steps in the design and implementation of an evaluation plan. Section 2 addresses issues for…

This guide to program evaluation presents questions that illuminate aspects of the evaluation process. Issues to consider in program evaluation are: (1) the intended results of the program; (2) hypotheses about the possible results of the program; (3) the types of data that will indicate achievement of the intended results and the variables that…

This report presents results from a 3-year evaluation of the Title I "Success for All" (SFA) schoolwide program being implemented at four elementary schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, Alaska. SFA meets the criteria of Title I regulations and has a strong reading component with frequent assessments of student…

This paper describes the experiences of Colorado Springs School District Eleven in using multiple measures to determine if third graders were reading at "grade level." The use of multiple measures may be threatened by the rapidly increasing pressures about assessment and accountability in Colorado that teachers are beginning to feel that…

Project Change is a community-driven anti-racism initiative operating in four communities: Albuquerque, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Valdosta, Georgia. The formative evaluation of Project Change began in 1994 when all of the sites were still in planning or early action phases. Findings from the summative evaluation will be…

School district accountability efforts have been challenged to develop procedures that determine the effects of their programs on student achievement within the typical implementation setting (i.e., nonrandom student assignment to nested school within program placements). Disentangling program effects from contextual and participant factors…

School-linked services are one program approach seeking to address concerns about fragmented and duplicative services by offering the school site as a single point of entry. Most of these programs display a holistic approach to children, joint planning, shared service delivery, and collaboration or coordination. Determining how school-linked…

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the third in the kit, discusses the logic underlying the use of quantitative research designs, including the pretest-posttest design, and supplies step-by-step procedures for setting up and interpreting the…

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the seventh in the kit, provides an overview of a variety of approaches to measuring performance outcomes. It presents considerations in deciding what to measure and in selecting or developing instruments best suited to…