The 1994 U.S. History Framework encourages students to learn about ideas and people and to understand how the present world is the result of choices and convictions of people, and the focus of the assessment is to see what diverse U.S. students in grades 4, 8, and 12 understand about U.S. history. The framework proposes that students studying U.S.…

This report examines the process used to evaluate five early childhood teacher education programs in Sweden, a process involving decentralized self-studies and site visits of approximately 5 hours in length conducted by an international expert. The report first provides background information on Helen L. Carlson, of the University of Minnesota,…

In 1989 the Department of Education contracted with Development Associates, Inc., to conduct a review of the evaluation and improvement practices of projects funded under Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, often known as the Bilingual Education Act. The study focused on local transitional bilingual education and special…

Schools that are concerned with evaluating their programs need more than just the average scaled assessment scores from standardized tests. To help schools, the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program produces school and district reports that contain the stories behind the averages. These reports describe the kind of students who took the…

After emphasizing the need for a system for evaluating professional support personnel (i.e., counselors, school psychologists, social workers, school nurses, deans of students, librarians, work-study supervisors, directors of curriculum, content specialists) and reviewing the past and present nature of evaluation in education, this document…

This guide presents ways for practitioners to use Chapter 1 achievement data to better understand and evaluate elements of a Chapter 1 program. A variety of types and levels of questions can be addressed with achievement data. Combining standardized achievement test scores with data from the program and from the regular classroom greatly increases…

An introductory report, six commissioned papers, and four selected background reports presented at the North Berwick Workshop, one of a series of educational research meetings sponsored by the Council of Europe, are provided. The Workshop brought together research workers and educational administrators from different countries to: review…

This book contains 24 essays addressing higher education evaluation and published in the International Journal of Institutional Management in Higher Education between 1979 and 1986. They are as follows: "The Evaluation of Higher Education: An Introductory Note" (Maurice Kogan); "Allocation of Public Funds on Instructional Performance/Quality…

This paper describes the means by which an in-house evaluation for the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) was constructed to facilitate communication among different levels of the agency. The VDOT underwent a decentralization process, beginning in 1986, under the direction of a decentralization committee. In early 1989, a qualitative…

The influences within the Ontario educational system perceived by teachers, department heads, and principals as affecting their evaluation policies and practices were studied. Interviews were conducted in the 1987-88 school year as part of the Ecology of Evaluation research project conducted in Ontario and British Columbia. About 50 elementary and…

This report describes a project undertaken at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) between January 1, 1982 and March 31, 1984, which was designed to increase the use in program assessment and in program improvement of information derived from measures of: (1) student achievement in general education; (2) student achievement in the major…

The politics of program evaluation are discussed from the personal perspective of the Director of the General Accounting Office's Program Evaluation and Methodology Division, which has produced reports for committees of the United States Congress. It is concluded that successful evaluations must be useful to others and must understand the…

This paper discusses the experiences and insight derived from the 1985-1986 Statewide Evaluation of the Early Education Program of Handicapped Children in Louisiana, the multimethod evaluation of preschool intervention projects for handicapped and at-risk children. The program served almost 5,000 handicapped preschoolers and their parents,…

Views of the chief academic officers at Minnesota colleges concerning assessment were surveyed. Responses were received from 17 private colleges, 5 University of Minnesota campuses, 7 state universities, 18 community colleges, and 33 area vocational-technical institutes. For each type of institution, survey results are presented concerning: the…

This paper examines possible explanations for the fact that evaluation results are rarely used. Most explanatory factors for use of results in decision making mentioned in the literature have been clustered in three categories of variables. They concern: (1) the making of decisions about the practical problem; (2) the way in which evaluation is…