A study involving a simple random sample of 180 county-level administrators employed by the U.S. Cooperative Extension Service assessed the effects of client and administrator involvement as stakeholders in evaluation. A posttest-only control group design was used. Variables included level of administrator involvement as stakeholders and level of…

Although some researchers have argued against use of the term "content validity," the ability of a test item to adequately represent the domain of knowledge tested continues to be an issue of paramount importance in test construction. The present paper reviews previous analyses of test content and proposes a new empirical method for…

Eleven judges representing 11 different geographic regions in the United States participated in a standard-setting session designed to determine the possibility of obtaining interjudge consensus and intrajudge consistency simultaneously. Each judge had experience in the field for which standards were being set. The judges rated 65 multiple-choice…

As more public money is spent on educational reform, the issue of school accountability arises more often. California high schools have traditionally participated in an external validation process to gain accreditation from the regional commission, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Schools that receive compensatory funding…

The Action Training Model (ATM) was developed for the delivery of evaluation training to development workers in Kenya and Botswana and implemented under the aegis of the German Foundation for International Development. Training of evaluators is a challenge in any context, but in the Third World environment, evaluation training offers special…

The literature on the practice of educational evaluation is reviewed, and internal and external evaluations in a school setting are compared. The paper states that the typical external evaluation is conducted as if school districts were rational organizations, a view which permeated 19th century evaluation activities. The internal evaluator, on…

The choice of methods is part of the overall evaluation design process. The process consists of the following steps: (1) analyzing the problem context; (2) asking a few general questions; (3) selecting the methods (strategies) to use; and (4) selecting the specific techniques (tactics) to use. To operate successfully the evaluator needs to know…

Evaluation can serve a variety of educational management questions, but an administrator's ability to use evaluation as a management tool depends not only upon his or her own perception of evaluation but also on the perceptions of other potential evaluation users in the system. Research has uncovered a variety of factors influencing an…

Designed for educational evaluators, this paper discusses reasons for the growing concern with linking or interfacing computers for information sharing; compares three major approaches to linking; and discusses the implications of each. An initial overview presents three linking applications in educational evaluation: (1) linking microcomputers…

A study involving 20 British teachers assessed the use of micro-teaching techniques in the training of oral assessors (raters) of students. The study was designed to: measure the efficacy of a training program versus that of a sensitization program, examine methodologies associated with micro-teaching as applied to specific in-service teacher…

Examples of the difficulties that public school program evaluators can have in explaning perplexing results are provided. Arguments abound over the best way to report a finding that has multiple interpretations or presentation options, and the enigma of realizing that one way to report a finding is not the only way, or even necessarily the best…

This study gathered information on the communication skills of preservice teachers using a rating scale based on the Speech Communication Association's (SCA) newly developed list of Teacher Communication Competencies. The research focused on two questions: (1) Can raters from different backgrounds with different levels of training reliably use a…

The purposes of this study are: (1) to investigate the attitudes of Florida Extension Service specialists toward in-service education evaluation; (2) to determine the extent to which extension specialists are evaluating in-service education programs for which they have responsibility; (3) to determine the kinds of in-service education evaluation…

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to describe the functions and tasks of vocational evaluators in educational settings, and (2) to seek data pertaining to the certification, qualification, and status of vocational evaluators in this system. Letters were sent to vocational education supervisory staff in all fifty states, Washington, D.C.,…

Personnel at Saint Louis University's Department of Education have been theorizing, researching, and enlarging an approach to program evaluation that focuses heavily on the place of values in making judgments. This work originally stemmed from general curriculum evaluative theory developed by James H. McElhinney and Richard C. Kunkel. The content…