Although the demand for formal evaluation of alternative schools is greater than for conventional schools, the unique characteristics of these schools make evaluation especially challenging. Use of traditional instruments and methods may yield misleading results. Evaluators must understand the issues associated with the evaluation of alternative…

This brief suggests that performance accountability offers the chance to refocus on what learners accomplish by participating in adult basic education (ABE) and to reorient every aspect of the system to achieve the best results. The 1966 Adult Education Act provides little guidance in developing performance accountability. Recent research…

This manual was designed for Catholic Relief Services staff who want to improve the health and nutrition component of maternal and child health programs. The methodology presented had already been used in two country programs in Africa, and the experiences in those program evaluations made this guide to participatory evaluation useful for other…

This monograph reviews and synthesizes highlights from relevant writings on evaluation and suggests interpretations and applications for practitioners who plan and conduct various types of educational programs for adults. It suggests that planning and conducting effective educational programs for adults entails contributions by various…

This paper describes the teaching skills workshops at Purdue University (Indiana), which were originally developed in 1980 to train graduate assistants to teach college classes but are now being used by the faculty--instructors through full professors--to improve their teaching. It is noted that the workshops have been successfully modified for…

The measurement of value added (MVA) is a powerful tool that can help British further education colleges improve student and program performance. MVA can focus on individual learners, sectional management issues, and presentation of colleges' achievements to external audiences. MVA may be used for the following purposes: improving guidance and…

Responding to calls by Missouri's Coordinating Board of Higher Education and in turn by Northeast Missouri State University, the communication faculty appointed a committee on oral communication assessment. The committee submitted to the communication faculty an assessment proposal that focused on answering the question of whether the basic speech…

As part of the process of developing an assessment system for Washington State Adult Basic Education/English as a Second Language (ABE/ESL) a review of literature was conducted, the product of which is the annotated bibliography presented here. The first section of the bibliography is a review of the materials found during the course of the…

Challenges faced in the evaluation of programs for the disabled are discussed, focusing on values orientation, key stakeholders, program structure, and measurement issues. Workers in the field are presently witnessing a fundamental change in the philosophy that underlies programs for persons with disabilities. Evaluators must be sensitive to the…

An outgrowth of several previous projects conducted by the Illinois Literacy Resource Development Center (ILRDC), the Quality Programs Project is a collaborative effort to improve the quality of literacy services in the Chicago area. A long-term investment in quality programming at the local level, the Quality Programs Project has as its primary…

Developmental research, as opposed to simple instructional development, has been defined as the systematic study of designing, developing, and evaluating instructional programs, processes, and products that must meet criteria of internal consistency and effectiveness. Developmental research is particularly important in the field of instructional…

Varied aspects of Swedish Distance Education are described in this report, which is based primarily on an evaluation that analyzed student background, study problems, student use of and attitudes towards distance aids, study results, and the psychological consequences of distance education. Emphasis is on an investigation of distance education…

Discussed are nine questions regarding standard setting issues in educational testing: (1) Should normative or content-referenced standards be used? (2) Different standard setting methods yield different results. Does this finding present a problem? (3) Assess the adequacy of the grounding of various methods of standard setting in psychological…

The University of Colorado at Boulder is in the fifth year of a seven-year cycle of program review of academic units on the campus, primarily focusing on improving weak programs through a system of self-study designed to specifically address concerns of fairness, credibility, and usefulness. The units under review use data provided by the Office…

This paper is a reaction to the "Standards for Evaluations of Educational Programs, Projects and Materials," focusing on the applicability of these standards. The evaluation of programs almost without exception deals with the evaluation of change of programs, taking the form of comparative studies, and being valued according to how the…