In attempting to use a realistic evaluation approach to explore the role of Community Parents in early parenting programs in Toronto, a novel technique was developed to analyze the links between contexts (C), mechanisms (M) and outcomes (O) directly from experienced practitioner interviews. Rather than coding the interviews into themes in terms of…

Background: Obesity is a public health concern that disproportionately affects underserved and minority communities. Purpose: To evaluate whether a comprehensive obesity prevention program that targets children and school staff in an underserved Hispanic community affects obesity related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors among both students and…

This article describes the lessons learned during the implementation of a new master's degree program for K-8 teachers. The program's goal was to increase student inquiry and sense making in mathematics and science classrooms. Each of the twenty-four teacher participants reported strong satisfaction with the program, and a variety of measures…

Delaware was in the first group of states to receive a federal grant in 2012 to improve early care and education services and increase the number of infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children in high-quality programs. One component of the state's grant is a rigorous validation process for Delaware Stars for Early Success, a voluntary quality…

Over the past five years, California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) recruited 39 Noyce Scholars for STEM teacher preparation in high-needs schools. As of April 1, 2014, the program has saved approximate $150,000 of NSF funding for this grant. In this summative report, program effectiveness has been examined in three aspects, "Noyce…

Effective teaching has long been an issue of national concern, but in recent years focus on the effectiveness of programs to produce high-quality teachers has sharpened. Long-standing achievement gaps persist despite large-scale legislative changes at the federal and state levels, and American students continue to show poorer performance on…

Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) have advanced and matured, a number of states and localities have undertaken evaluations to validate the systems. Such efforts stem from the desire to ensure that the system is designed and operating in the ways envisioned when the system was established. Given that a central component in a QRIS…

This study examines changes in parent support and child emergent literacy skills over time as children moved from Head Start into kindergarten. It compares the transactional parent-child influences in families randomly assigned in Head Start to receive an enriched home visiting program that emphasized parents as teachers relative to a control…

In this evaluation, as in previous years, four main aspects of the implementation of the West Virginia Board of Education's Master Plan for Statewide Professional Development were examined: (a) basic information reported by providers about the size and scope of the effort, including attendance, and adherence to the newly adopted standards for…

This paper presents a statistical analysis to support the notion that the Information Systems Analyst (ISA) exam can be used as a program assessment tool in addition to measuring student performance. It compares ISA exam scores earned by students in one particular Computer Information Systems program with scores earned by the same students on the…

We present a MATLAB script INSOLATE.m that calculates insolation at the top of the atmosphere and the total amount of daylight during the year (and other quantities) with respect to geographic latitude and Earth's obliquity (axial tilt). The script output displays insolation values for an entire year on a three-dimensional graph. This tool…

The use of standard-based assessment, grading and reporting tools is essential to ensure that assessment meets acceptable levels of quality and standardization. This study reports the design, development and evaluation of a standards-based assessment tool for the instructors at Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman. The Rapid Applications…

Business educators have been challenged recently to provide increased experiential learning opportunities for students. Proponents of experienced-based learning subscribe to the view that such experiences engage students actively in the learning process, and because of the linkage between practice and theory, better prepare students for the…

It is through effective implementation of activities and exercises which students can be motivated and consequently lead to language learning. However, as an insider, the experience of teaching English for General Purposes (EGP) course indicates that it has some problems which need to be modified. In order to evaluate the EGP course,…

Although the ever increasing diverse immigrant and refugee students enrich and bring diversity to America's social fabric, they seem to encounter numerous challenges as they acculturate and integrate into their new school culture and environment. Although most school systems and higher education institutions have made significant efforts to…