The article reports on a case study of impact evaluation of external quality assurance, i.e. institutional evaluation including programme accreditation, which was carried out by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education at Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest in the form of a methodological before-after…

Like instruments used in afterschool programs to assess children's social and emotional growth or to evaluate staff members' performance, instruments used to evaluate program quality should be free from bias. Practitioners and researchers alike want to know that assessment instruments, whatever their type or intent, treat all people fairly and do…

The purpose of this case study is to examine the impact of the development and design of a district leadership competency model on leadership development outcomes in one Georgia school district. Specifically, we seek to illuminate the importance of Leadership Competency Models for (1) increasing clarity among aspiring leaders about the…

Background and objectives: Although randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been performed to alleviate loneliness among older people, little is known about how they have been implemented, or whether they are effective in real life. Our RCT-based model, "Circle of Friends" (CoF) proved to be effective in improving the wellbeing, health…

This paper presents a case study based on the evaluation of the two VAL (virtual action learning) sets. We report participants learning both leadership and the VAL process based on the basis of telephone interviews. We conclude that what is learned about leadership is connected with how learning takes place and suggest that the content and process…

Policymakers are proposing the use of outcome measures as indicators of effective principal preparation programs. The three most common metrics recommended are: (1) graduates' effectiveness in improving student achievement test scores, (2) graduate job placement rates, and (3) principal job retention once employed. This article explores the use of…

Background: Diabetes self-management education (DSME) is generally considered to be a key determinant of the treatment outcomes and related costs of diabetes mellitus. While DSME programmes generally have positive outcomes, their effects may depend on certain factors, such as the type of programmes provided and patients' level of health literacy…

Besides traditional admissions criteria, research-intensive social work PhD programs may rely on personal interviews and curriculum vitae or resumes to gauge prior research experience to determine applicants' fit for the research-related productivity expected in their programs. Case record review of social work PhD candidates (n=56) entering the…

An environmental education (EE) consortium located in the pacific northwest United States coalesced an external evaluation team to research its K-5 EE programming. The purpose of this article is to describe one phase of this program evaluation process including the exploration of adult stakeholder perceptions of EE programming accessed by 4th…

The Worker Retraining (WRT) program is a key strategy in meeting the economic and workforce needs of Washington's workers and employers. Funded through the state legislature, the aim of WRT is to ensure dislocated and other unemployed workers have access to education and training that will help them reattach to the labor market in jobs and careers…

The purpose of this program evaluation was to evaluate the effectiveness of a personalized learning environment while analyzing the cultural changes a small school district faced as it transitioned to a new delivery model using individual technological devices. Findings for the study will be used to guide 1:1 Chromebook implementation initiatives…

This paper is the first issue of the Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) Symposium Collective Works publication, devoted to summaries of the presentations that took place at the 2018 symposium. The guiding topic of the symposium, assessment of student learning, was interwoven in breakout sessions with a great variety of topics such as equity,…

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) marked the beginning of a new development cycle for accountability systems. State leaders once again have an opportunity to redesign their accountability systems based on the provisions included in ESSA and to ensure that systems improve outcomes for all students. The correct identification of…

Since established by an Appropriations Act in 2006, the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) competitive grant program in the U.S. Department of Education has supported human capital strategies "to ensure that students attending high-poverty schools have better access to effective teachers and principals, especially in hard-to-staff subject…

Background: Integrated healthcare delivered by work groups in nontraditional service settings is increasingly common, yet contemporary implementation frameworks typically assume a single organization--or organizational unit--within which system-level processes influence service quality and implementation success. Recent implementation frameworks…