The importance of higher education has never been clearer. Educational attainment--the number of years a person spends in school--strongly predicts adult earnings, as well as health and civic engagement. Yet relative to other developed nations, educational attainment in the United States is lagging, with young Americans who heretofore led the…

This report describes the purposes of benchmark assessments and provides recommendations for selecting and using benchmark assessments--addressing validity, alignment, reliability, fairness and bias and accessibility, instructional sensitivity, utility, and reporting issues. We also present recommendations on building capacity to support schools'…

This paper presents a primer on building a scientifically oriented teacher evaluation instrument. It stresses the importance of accurate measures and accepts the presupposition that scientific approaches provide the most accurate measures of student teacher performance. The paper discusses the scientific concepts of validity and reliability, and…

The state of the "Standards for Evaluation of Educational Programs, Projects, and Materials" is discussed. The standards were designed by a 17-member Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation to insure an ethical approach to the evaluation of educational programs and personnel. There are four major categories of standards.…

Research on student evaluation of college teachers' performance is briefly summarized. Lawrence M. Aleamoni offers four arguments in favor of student ratings: (1) students are the main source of information about the educational environment; (2) students are the most logical evaluators of student satisfaction and effectiveness of course elements;…

A professional support personnel evaluation model is presented that is grounded in sound evaluation theory and conceptualized in research as well as practice. Validity, reliability, and utility are acknowledged in the seven steps of an evaluation model that balances institutional and individual needs. (SLD)

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

Many states have a disconnected body of laws regarding educator evaluation. Uncoordinated legislation can create problems with respect to evaluation, appropriate standards and methods to be employed, and implementation strategies. This paper describes Utah's educator-evaluation legislation to illustrate this phenomenon. Four statutory provisions…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

Findings and research designs used to study university students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness are reviewed. A construct validation approach which recognizes the multidimensionality of both effective teaching and students' evaluations is recommended for further research. (BS)

Assessment systems to measure high educational standards emerged as the major theme at the 1996 conference of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), "Moving Up to Complex Assessment." This feature article, providing a summation of the proceedings of the conference, reports that the…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

A model for evaluation of complex educational settings is proposed. The model covers measurement, judgment, and decision making and the related criteria of reliability, validity, and utility. A second proposed model depicts the provincial educational setting. The development of a provincial item bank illustrates the application of the models. (TJH)

A number of research reports and meta analyses on student evaluation of college teaching were reviewed. Student ratings were found to be multidimensional, reliable, valid, and relatively unbiased. Results were useful for feedback, course selection, and personnel decisions. Marsh's Students' Evaluations of Educational Quality (SEEQ) was also…