Using data strategically to guide decisions and actions can have a positive effect on education practices and processes. This facilitation guide shows education data teams how to move beyond simply reporting data to applying data to direct strategic action. Using guiding questions, suggested activities, and activity forms, this guide provides…

This article describes a research-driven heuristic for the scholarly evaluation of teaching and learning interventions, which is systematic, collaborative, and discipline focused. We offer this guide to educational developers and other instructional support staff who are tracking the impact of interventions in teaching and learning with academic…

The "Value-Added School Review (VSR)" is an analytical model designed to assist schools in identifying and addressing opportunities for school improvement. The model works best when it is focused purposefully on students and the student learning outcomes as defined in the "Guide to Education". It complements the processes…

This guide is designed to help districts and schools evaluate reform efforts related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), including School Improvement Grants. It includes practical, how-to tips for conducting program evaluations, whether one takes a "do-it-yourself" approach or seeks outside assistance to evaluate reform…

This book provides a uniquely accessible introduction to multilevel modeling, a powerful tool for analyzing relationships between an individual level dependent variable, such as student reading achievement, and individual-level and contextual explanatory factors, such as gender and neighborhood quality. Helping readers build on the statistical…

This monograph looks first at opportunities provided by research in the adult literacy field and then identifies challenges to scientific research and suggests ways to address these challenges so that better evidence can be generated in the future. It has two goals that support the building of a stronger research base for the adult literacy…

Attempting to define curriculum inquiry, this study examines published reports of curriculum inquiry and classifies the problems studied, the methods used, and the solutions proposed. (MCG)

There has been an increasing emphasis in educational policies, practices and professional development on the capacity of educational leadership to exert a causal impact on student cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. If the strict criteria of counterfactual causality are adhered to no causal inference could be made about the effects of…

A discussion of classroom research to promote instructional improvement at the college level looks at how it can be effective in faculty development and describes several research projects. Issues in research promotion, design, and methodology and the feasibility of such projects in instructional development units are considered. (Author/MSE)

Argues that research administrators would function more effectively and enjoy their work more with a better understanding of research. Offers examples of how some basic principles of research design can be readily conveyed to administrators with little or no research training. Discusses ways research administrators might benefit from better…

Third in a series, the monograph summarizes the key evaluation issues, design approaches, and statistical techniques used in conducting the 1980-1983 impact evaluation of Indian Education Act Title IV Part A programs. The monograph describes the major problems in evaluating the program to determine the degree of its positive contribution to…

Makes a distinction between developmental and remedial programs and suggests reasons for the difficulty in evaluating these programs. Identifies basic limitations in educational research, factors found in successful programs, questions to be considered in selecting and formulating the evaluation design, and five useful educational research…

Maintains that economic research recently has been characterized by the development of increasingly sophisticated models of economics learning. Recommends that further application of the Survey on Economic Attitudes include factor analysis as an alternative approach to gain additional insights into affective economics learning. (CFR)

Reviews the history and conclusions of school effectiveness research, which focuses on student achievement, and of school improvement research, which emphasizes educational innovation per se; analyzes the methodologies of these two lines of inquiry. Distills from both bodies of literature seven school characteristics that constitute excellence.…

This paper is a proposal to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on ways to evaluate its environment for multicultural living and education. The paper begins by discussing the nature and definition of a multicultural society in higher education and the nation and minority population trends into the next century. The next issue examined…