In this article, Julia So discusses the purpose of program assessment, four common missteps of program assessment and reporting, and how to prevent them. The four common missteps of program assessment and reporting she has observed are: (1) unclear or ambiguous program goals; (2) measurement error of program goals and outcomes; (3) incorrect unit…

A growing understanding of the importance of children's earliest years has led to an increasing desire to measure early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. There are now nearly 150 tools for measuring ECD outcomes internationally, which can make it challenging to choose an appropriate measurement tool for a given measurement effort. This…

In this article, the authors examine evaluation process use in a large multilevel, multisite core evaluation. This case highlights the nature of the evaluation processes of the Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) core evaluation in terms of four categories: (1) social processing; (2) engagement; (3) involvement; and (4)…

This guide is designed as a resource for leaders and evaluators of K-12 online learning programs. In this guide, the term "online learning" is used to refer to a range of education programs and resources in the K-12 arena, including distance learning courses offered by universities, private providers, or teachers at other schools;…

The South African Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) is currently involved with its second round of national programme reviews in the field of education. Such national reviews are designed to foster quality and equity within the broader Higher Education (HE) system as whole, through peer evaluation and public discourse processes and…

This qualitative case study investigated faculty perceptions of the purposes, costs, and benefits of program evaluation during a comprehensive review by the Office of Graduate Studies at a large Research I university. The assumptions held by the faculty at the beginning of the review process about the purposes of a program evaluation and their…

The theorists whose work appears in this issue have confronted the exercise presented to them in vastly different ways. The editors of this journal asked these theorists to consider how they would evaluate the Bunche-Da Vinci program, and to make and specify assumptions about the program context. The primary task, however, was to describe "a…

This article deals with an on-line soils module project. The two goals for this part of the project were to determine if an on-line soils module could be successfully used for asynchronous instruction of two diverse populations and to determine which demographic factors are related to test performance. The module was presented to an eighth-grade…

San Diego State University's (SDSU) Learning through CyberApprenticeship program, awarded in 1999 under the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) initiative, was built on a simple but challenging premise: to establish and develop a system through which preservice teachers enrolled in EdTec 4701 work directly with technologically…

Whereas mentoring programs are well received as support services, very little empirical research has been conducted to assess the effectiveness of these programs to meet the diverse needs of different special populations of youth. Potentially useful theoretical orientations (attachment, parental acceptance-rejection, social support, adult…

Responsive evaluation offers a perspective in which evaluation is reframed from the assessment of program interventions on the basis of policy makers' goals to an engagement with and among all stakeholders about the value and meaning of their practice. Responsive evaluators have to be extra sensitive to power relations given the deliberate…

Program evaluation has long been used to reveal program characteristics, merits, and challenges. While providing information about program effectiveness, evaluations can also ensure understanding of program outcomes, efficiency, and quality. Furthermore, evaluations can analyze and examine a program's political and social environment as well as…