Measuring the various structural aspects of the organizing framework for this volume and relating them to match quality and relevant developmental outcomes is a critical step toward assessing the framework's utility for practitioners, policymakers, and program evaluators. Nakkula and Harris take a step in that direction by exploring core…

Background: Facing growing accountability pressures, Teacher Work Samples (TWSs) as a model of performance-based assessment is of growing significance in teacher education. Developed at Western Oregon University and widely adopted and adapted, proponents claim that the model is "real," "natural," "meaningful," and "helpful" (G. R. Girod, 2002).…

The increasing influence of sociocultural theories of learning on assessment practices in second language education necessitates an expansion of the knowledge base that teacher-assessors need to develop (what teachers need to know) and related changes in the processes of language teacher education (how they learn and develop it). Teacher assessors…

The "Race to the Top" competitive grant program initiated a wave of teacher evaluation reform, which scholars and policymakers have long identified as critical to improving teacher quality and student performance. State boards of education (SBEs) and state education agencies (SEAs) took different approaches to these reforms, and as a…

Cross-lingual tests are assessment instruments created in one language and adapted for use with another language group. Practitioners and researchers use cross-lingual tests for various descriptive, analytical and selection purposes both in comparative studies across nations and within countries marked by linguistic diversity (Hambleton, 2005).…

Traditional systems of teacher evaluation are often ineffective because they rely on outmoded evaluative criteria, usually in the form of checklists; simplistic assessments, such as "needs improvement"; procedures that fail to differentiate between new and veteran teachers' experience and expertise; lack of consistency among evaluators;…

Objective: To report on remission rates in anxious youth who participated in the Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS). The CAMS, a multisite clinical trial, randomized 488 children and adolescents (ages 7-17 years; 79% Caucasian; 50% female) with separation, social, and/or generalized anxiety disorder to a 12-week treatment of…

We investigated the scoring of the Speaking section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] Internet-based (TOEFL iBT[R]) test by speakers of English and one or more Indian languages. We explored the extent to which raters from India, after being trained and certified, were able to score the TOEFL examinees with mixed first languages…

Students were surveyed and asked to self-evaluate their performance and time-on-task in six engineering courses (eight sections). Surveys were conducted four times over the course of a 10-week quarter. Students with the highest grade point averages (GPAs) (2.88 mean; 4.00 mode) indicated "no change" while students with lower GPAs (2.67 mean; 1.83…

This study investigated factors that could affect inter-examiner reliability in the pronunciation assessment component of speaking tests. We hypothesized that the rating of pronunciation is susceptible to variation in assessment due to the amount of exposure examiners have to nonnative English accents. An inter-rater variability analysis was…

New and novel uses of evaluation processes and findings are possible when a community of practice develops as evaluation stakeholders participate in multisite evaluations in multiple ways. Developing such communities takes advantage of what makes multisite evaluations special. This chapter uses the example of the Innovative Technology Experiences…

This study investigated raters' personality traits in relation to scores they assigned to offenders using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). A total of 22 participants, including graduate students and faculty members in clinical psychology programs, completed a PCL-R training session, independently scored four criminal offenders using the…

This study examined how external evaluators' assessments of a management team and its leader are impacted by congruence between the leader's gender and the gender typing of the industry in which the team works. We experimentally tested our theory using industries that are either male typed or gender neutral, with teams led by male and female…

Five knowledge-for-action theories are summarized and compared in this chapter for their evaluation implications: knowledge utilization, diffusion, implementation, transfer, and translation. Usually dispersed across multiple fields and disciplines, these theories are gathered here for a common focus on knowledge and change. Knowledge in some form…

Successfully providing guidance to others is no easy task. Such is the challenge faced by committees charged with developing guidelines for ethical professional practice. The process of establishing and revising the Program Evaluation Standards (Joint Committee, 1994), for example, is a multiyear task that must seems endless to participants: a…