This chapter discusses the Association of American Colleges and Universities' (AAC&U's) Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) project, which aims to demonstrate that faculty across the country share fundamental expectations about student learning on all of the essential learning outcomes deemed critical for student…

This report is the fifth in a series that constitutes a comprehensive evaluation of the public library statistics program carried out annually by the Federal State Cooperative System for Public Library Data (FSCS). The evaluation aims to revise and promote the FSCS classification structure that divides library organizations into municipal, school…

The Project on State-Level Child Outcomes is designed to assist states and other groups to improve the measurement of child outcomes in state welfare evaluations and in other state data systems. This report summarizes a meeting of the 12 states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont,…

This report is based on the observations of the recent director/consultant of the Center for Evaluation and Policy Research (CEPR) at the University of Vermont concerning evaluation practices in educational research. The history of CEPR and descriptions of practices in managing the center, directing several research and evaluation projects, and…

This guide addresses the problem of bomb threats in schools, public or private, kindergarten through 12th grade. Colleges and universities are excluded because they generally differ from schools. The guide reviews the factors that increase the risk of bomb threats in schools and then identifies a series of questions that might assist departments…

The role of musical intelligence was investigated in grades K-3 at a central Florida elementary school. Teachers implemented the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) of Howard Gardner in elementary curricula. The guiding question in this research was: What, if any, musical growth takes place as a result of a MI curriculum? The extent and quality…

Builds on C. Christie's innovative work to chart a future course for research on evaluation. Describes a variety of forms that a more evidence-based approach to evaluation theory could take and offers suggestions to help increase the amount and impact of evidence in evaluation theory. (SLD)

Developed and evaluated a measure of higher education teachers' repertoire of teaching methods, the Teaching Methods Inventory (TMI). Found that the TMI was not a useful indicator of repertoire (or that repertoire was not a very useful indicator of teaching quality) because of poor correlations with the Approaches to Teaching Inventory and the…

Considers how projects in higher education must often demonstrate their impact through measurement and evaluation and describes experiences in the EFFECTS (Effective Framework for Embedding C&IT through Targeted Support) project that focused on the use of communications and information technology (C&IT). Highlights include impact on…

Describes a $50 million research and development program begun by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) to develop assessment instruments and prototypes for its teacher certification system. NBPTS's mission is to develop a national voluntary certification system for experienced teachers. (FMW)

Developed a 41-item instrument to assess educational service quality in pharmacy schools, defined as student perceptions of school service performance. The instrument assessed both perceptions of educational process (functional quality) and outcome (technical quality). Fourth-year pharmacy students completed the instrument, and its validity and…

Using national survey data, examined how postsecondary institutions have approached undergraduate student assessment, the organizational and administrative patterns used to support assessment, and the institutional uses and impacts realized from assessment efforts. Detailed findings included that patterns of assessment approaches, organizational…

The problem of finding optimal calibration designs for dichotomous item response theory (IRT) models has been extensively studied in the literature. In this study, this problem will be extended to polytomous IRT models. Focus is given to items described by the nominal response model (NRM). The optimizations objective is to minimize the generalized…

Metaevaluations are systematic reviews of evaluations to determine the quality of their processes and findings. The knowledge about evaluation quality that results from metaevaluation of multiple evaluations can be used to inform researchers' decisions about which studies to include in evaluation syntheses. Metaevaluations of multiple studies are…

This article presents a comprehensive taxonomy of essential competencies for program evaluators. First, the authors provide a rationale for developing evaluator competencies, along with a brief history of the initial development and validation of the taxonomy of essential evaluator competencies in King, Stevahn, Ghere, and Minnema (2001). Second,…