This report presents an overview of research objectives, sampling approaches, data collection procedures, and instruments and plans for analysis used in assessing the impact of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports on different types of fitness programs. Surveys were conducted of: (1) community fitness programs; (2) employee…

This status report is an attempt to provide a comprehensive picture of Head Start home-based programs which aimed at helping parents provide children with the same kinds of activities and support in their own homes that children would receive in any quality child development center. Data was collected through: (1) Children (1st) First, Inc.'s…

Based on reviews of the final performance and evaluation reports of 81 career education projects funded by the U.S. Office of Education during 1976, this comprehensive report seeks to identify ways of making future evaluation efforts in this area more fruitful. The introduction consists of definitions of key terms and a clarification of the source…

The paper presents a model to assist administrators of special education programs for multiply handicapped children in making budgetary decisions and in evaluating therapy programs. The model's use requires that the efficiency and effectiveness of the various therapeutic services be measured and that the service needs of the multiply handicapped…

The purpose of this monograph is to present broad considerations related to the collection and analysis of cost information on programs for young handicapped children and to illustrate those considerations with examples of systems used in four rural Handicapped Children's Early Education Program (HCEEP) projects. The two papers in Section I…

The first paper in this collection of symposium papers presents the results of a survey of nearly 800 educational institutions and provides information on institutional characteristics, institutions engaged in teacher education evaluation, scope of data collected, methods of data collection, relationship between size of program and method of data…

Questions are raised about the future of research and development evaluation. Without a set of overarching policy questions or theoretical questions, evaluation data are simply not cumulative and cannot be organized into any data base. Education has never been a data-based enterprise. The meaning of evaluation should be broadened to include the…

The organizational structure of this manual parallels the evolutionary stages in school improvement--needs assessment, planning, implementation, and outcomes. The manual provides procedures for data-based management and includes within each section, sample instruments, data collection and analyses procedures, and questions for decision-making. The…

The extreme variability of the 50 projects under the NIE Program to Increase the Participation of Minorities and Women in Educational Research and Development necessitates an evaluation design that is flexible enough to accomodate significant differences in project characteristics, yet comprehensive enough to allow meaningful aggregation of…

The cross-levels hypothesis is presented as an explanation for program evaluation failures. It states that the usefulness of evaluation data as feedback for decision making varies inversely with the number of organizational levels between the action the data describe, and the decisions they are intended to influence. To be useful for decision…

The difficulties in evaluating bilingual education appear to have prevented success in all but a few evaluation attempts, but better and more meaningful evaluation is neccessary in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of bilingual programs. Many bilingual programs are undergoing constant modification, adequate assessment instruments have…

The data gathering forms and activities developed during the planning and implementation of an adult independent study and guidance program at the Salt Lake City Public Library are described. The need for a utilization of this data is outlined, and the study's goals and objectives are stated. Appendixes contain flow charts of the Salt Lake City…

This publication describes a practicum project that developed a comprehensive educational evaluation system for collecting, storing, and displaying pertinent data for use in planning educational programs at both the district and school level in the City School District of New Rochelle. The resulting New Rochelle Evaluation Model was developed from…

This report presents summary analyses of descriptive and comparative data collected during the 1973 Home Start evaluation project. The data presented were collected at 6 of the 16 Home Start sites, from three experimental groups of families (those entering the Home Start and Head Start programs in fall 1973 and those identified to enter Home Start…

An overall analysis is made of the impact of Grade 3 Title I reading programs in the State of Michigan. An attempt is made to estimate the effectiveness of particular reading programs for low-scoring, middle-scoring, and high-scoring pupils for the purpose of identifying exemplary programs. In addition, a rank ordering of the various programs…