District officials often assume that decentralization will produce immediate improvement, uncover abundant building-level expertise, and spawn productive, harmonious decision making. Staff development must be geared to eliminating false expectations, developing a thorough knowledge base, and understanding how to control and evaluate the program.…

Describes formal mentoring program for junior female faculty implemented by Southern Illinois University at Carbondale because women face more career barriers than men and because mentoring shows promise as a contributor to career success. Describes Faculty Mentoring Program and includes section on program evaluation. (NB)

Summarizes ongoing economic impact assessment activities at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for its Measurement and Standards Laboratory Program. Explores designing economic impact studies for integration into assessments of broader programmatic objectives. (SLD)

Marcel is a prototype electronic document delivery system based on multipurpose Internet mail extensions (MIME) that was designed and tested by the University of Northern Colorado. This article discusses program implementation and testing, hardware and software requirements and availability, and the program's future. (PEN)

A key task for individual student affairs offices is to demonstrate the impact services have on the academic mission of the university. Article describes the process that one student affairs office followed to implement a system of program evaluation and the positive impact of this endeavor. Provides implications for other student affairs offices.…

Discusses the development and implementation of a surgery-patient education program in two Dutch hospitals. Evaluation of the new program shows that the specified information was provided to only a limited extent, partly because of problems with the implementation process and partly because some information was made available for patients to use…

A decentralized teacher-coaching model has been adopted by several Los Angeles-area school districts through an initiative called Design for Excellence Linking Teaching and Achievement (DELTA). DELTA encourages coaches and beginning teachers to develop a personalized support plan, and stresses one-on-one relationships and support, not evaluation.…

Studied Comer's School Development Program (James P. Comer) in 23 middle schools in Prince George's County, Maryland. The study, involving repeated measurement with more than 12,000 students, shows that Comer schools implemented some of the program's central elements better than control schools did, but not all, or even most, of them. (SLD)

Comments on a study of Comer's School Development Model, indicating that the study, as conducted, was not a study of the model but a limited study of the effects of one application of the model's process. In addition, the evaluation was carried out over only 2 years for each group, when experience shows that at least 3 years are necessary to show…

Provides an overview of practical methods and tools for assessment planning and implementation for service learning and civic engagement projects conducted by colleges and universities. Offers suggestions to help readers design their own program assessment plans. (SLD)

The three articles of this special section illustrate the complexity of HIV risk behaviors and demonstrate the need to go beyond simply assessing drug use and sexual behavior. They support a more comprehensive view of risk that challenges intervention design and current methodology. (SLD)

This paper discusses results from an evaluation of the UK-based Communities that Care programme. This "risk and protective" programme was set up in 1997 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation with a central aim of exploring if such an approach could be successful in the UK context. Communities that Care puts into operation the "risk…

Family home childcare providers play an important role in the delivery of essential childcare and in early learning. According to the 1999 U.S. Census, 30.7% of children under 5 years of age in non-parental care attend organized family home care (Child Care Bureau, 2001). In Washington State, 27% of children attend regulated family home childcare…

The Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) is a bold approach to improving student learning by encouraging teachers, parents, and the community to work collaboratively to introduce innovative projects that address local needs. Initiated in 1999 by the Alberta Government and its partners, AISI provides targeted funding to school…

This is a book about quality and how to control quality through deliberate actions on the part of the professionals developing and implementing the instances of instruction available at an organization. Quality control theory favors no particular learning philosophy and is only directed towards aspects of how, what, where and when measurements are…