Assessing individuals' social and emotional (SE) knowledge, attitudes, and skills is a complex task. It requires careful consideration of the assessment purpose, rigor, practicality, burden, and ethics. Once you have considered these factors and have determined that you are, in fact, "Ready to Assess," you are ready to act and choose an…

Responding to the challenge of more rigorous and outcome-oriented program evaluation criteria of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), authors take a critical look at the intersection of two standards: Clinical Partnerships and Practice (Standard 2) and Program Impact (Standard 4). Illustrating one aspect of a secondary…

This summary reports the findings from two cluster-randomised trials of Drinkaware's school-based In:tuition life skills and alcohol education intervention: one trial of the programme for 10-11 year olds in primary schools, and another for 12-13 year olds in secondary schools. The trials have been carried out by the National Foundation for…

This project was designed to specifically apply a health planning management system to a school based health education risk reduction program. Additionally, the Adolescent Smoking and Alcohol Project assisted youth in making informed decisions about the use/abuse of alcohol and cigarettes. Program components included a related knowledge base;…

A case study is presented of the use of decision questions as the basis for designing an evaluation. Discussed are the need for a mechanism for ensuring the usefulness of evaluation results, reasons for trying an approach based on decisions identified as important, and the specific approaches and procedures used in one high school curriculum…

Provided are hypotheses and evaluation forms to evaluate vocational-occupational-technical education (V.O.T.E.) programs whose purposes include the mainstreaming of handicapped students. Materials are geared toward testing the following five hypotheses: most occupational administrators can cite specific examples of formal or informal evaluations…

Judgmental Policy Analysis was used to form models representing the judgmental policies of 73 educational personnel as they rated 16 programs in which characteristics were varied. Although the judges varied in criteria used and in consistency, the results illustrate potential uses of a methodology for studying the judgmental evaluative process.…

Students training to be teachers in a one-year postgraduate course are presented with a choice of course methodologies. This article is a case study of one group that chose to operate as a democratic learning cooperative. The efficacy of this approach in preparing teachers for work in local secondary schools is discussed. (Author/CT)

The effectiveness of a multi-component training program in career decision-making (CDM) was investigated. A seven-unit (seven weekly one-hour meetings) curriculum, advocating a sequence of planned decision-making actions, was administered to a random half of a sample of students, primarily from third-year English classes at Mountain View High…

The article presents a cooperative interagency approach for assessing effectiveness of programs and services to facilitate the transition of handicapped students from school to adult community living. Features of the model include cooperative planning at the policy level, implementation level, and direct service level; and collaboration by state…

High school sex education courses appear to facilitate attitudinal change in student tolerance of the sexual practices of others, but the personal value system of the student remains intact. Such programs appear to have little effect on the amount of sexual behavior while increasing the use of contraceptive methods among sexually active students.…

Describes a procedure for program evaluation of a special education day school. The procedure enables a program evaluator to: (1) identify priority evaluation information needs of a school staff, (2) involve those persons in evaluation design and implementation, and (3) determine the utility of the evaluation for program decision-making purposes.…

This document evaluates the success of the Objective-Based Career Guidance Program after one year, and includes details of all projects carried out during that year. The following three areas were explored during initial phases of implementation: (1) information about self, (2) information about careers, and (3) decision making. Three hundred…

A study assessed the impact of different kinds of school management techniques on the development of political attitudes among students. The hypothesis was that students in schools which encourage student participation in decision-making will reflect higher levels of political interest, trust, and confidence. It was confirmed. (Author/DB)

This article discusses some of the technical aspects of competency testing with attention to the psychometric and decision theory aspects, specifically, instrument validity, the establishment of cutting scores, and the cost-benefit analysis of program decisions. (Author/SJL)