A sample of 459 American Evaluation Association members was surveyed about ethical challenges they encountered in evaluation work. Respondents report a wide variety of ethical conflicts, with evaluators frequently pressured to compromise their roles as scientists and the evaluation product. A framework is proposed for interpreting these findings.…

Describes the implementation of the Missouri School Improvement Process in the Springfield School District in Missouri. Suggests that supplementing the outside-school-district evaluators with in-school-district auxiliary evaluators greatly contributed to the success of the outcomes process in Springfield. (JDI)

Studied the marking characteristics of experienced markers of GCSE role-play to ascertain the extent of variation between the marks they award and to determine whether more intermarker consistency could be obtained with a small increase in time for thought before a particular mark is awarded. Results underlie the importance of reducing the…

Four human judges agreed highly among themselves about the presence of errors committed by 60 adults solving algebra word problems, but were in less agreement about categorizing faults. An expert system agreed with judges about correctness of answers, but was in even less agreement about categorizing the faults. (SLD)

Describes the collaborative process and the lessons learned when the staff of a family-literacy program and an evaluator worked together to design and implement a portfolio assessment that was used to collect program-evaluation information for the Even Start program over two years. Discusses opportunities to collaborate in the development of this…

Developed an instrument to evaluate the performance of educational administrators at a Canadian medical school. After 3 yearly evaluations, 20 administrators and 80 evaluators acknowledged broader input into evaluation, but saw little evaluation-related improved performance. (SLD)

An assumption that is fundamental to the scoring of student-constructed responses (e.g., essays) is the ability of raters to focus on the response characteristics of interest rather than on other features. A common example, and the focus of this study, is the ability of raters to score a response based on the content achievement it demonstrates…

As federal special education laws change once again--with the passage of the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) amendments--what impact is it likely to have for parents, students, teachers, evaluators, school administrators, and the courts? This article describes the actions the author, an attorney within the…

Starting from the premise that the teaching profession tends to view formal assessment procedures with some misgivings, the following article attempts to develop the argument that the problem is, at least in part, one of too narrow a perspective. A case study is first described involving the trialling of a vocabulary test at a language teaching…

Teachers with an autonomy-supportive style rely on different instructional behaviors to motivate their students than do teachers with a controlling style. In the present investigation, the authors tested which of these instructional behaviors actually correlated positively or negatively with students' autonomy. The authors used Deci, Spiegel,…

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…

Program theory-driven evaluation science uses substantive knowledge, as opposed to method proclivities, to guide program evaluations. It aspires to update, clarify, simplify, and make more accessible the evolving theory of evaluation practice commonly referred to as theory-driven or theory-based evaluation. The evaluator in this chapter provides a…

A comparison of peer evaluations conducted outside the classroom to those conducted inside revealed that the ones conducted outside were more critical and less supportive of the students being rated. Moreover, the evaluations conducted outside the classroom provided more copious and critical answers to an open-ended question. It is suspected that…

The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 emphasized the growing concern in the United States that a need exists for highly qualified teachers, if children are to have a chance at succeeding in the 21st century. These pieces of legislation and philosophical change to learning have opened the…

The research literature reveals that there are many factors that influence the consistency of assessors' or examiners' judgements. One issue that has not been considered is whether National Vocational Qualifications assessors' consistency of judgement is affected by different types of evidence. In this article, 15 Customer Service and 12 Assessor…