The New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) was established in 1991 to fund the development of organizations that would create designs for innovative schools and help schools implement those designs. The plan deliberately develops expert organizations to help whole schools transform themselves. This handbook summarizes RAND's…

A good college assessment program should include departmental level assessment to evaluate what students learn in their major field. Small colleges have unique opportunities and constraints in developing departmental assessment programs. Because of their size, small departments can use labor-intensive methods and have more opportunities for…

In 1991, the Flemish Ministry of Education enacted a radical reorganization and rethinking of the education inspectorate in Flanders. Presenting an overview of this change, this paper reports on research that evaluated the effects of the 1991 decree regarding inspection funding. It focuses on the ways schools reacted to and made use of facilities…

This exploratory survey analyzes the toddler story time program at the Westerville Public Library (Ohio) for a 9-month period. One hundred thirty-five children between the ages of 24 and 36 months participated in the program with a parent or care giver. Each program was limited to 15 children with their parents and consisted of a 20-30 minute…

This report describes the process followed by the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) in developing a comprehensive model of educational outcomes and indicators for all students, including students with disabilities, who are completing school. Stage One involved identifying five alternative models of educational outcomes--an educational…

This guide shows why organizations need an assessment strategy to raise the quality and flexibility of the assessment they provide for learners. It contains guidelines to assist organizations in designing a strategy for offering a range of services for their own particular context. Section 1 discusses why organizations need an assessment policy.…

This paper presents a three-phase model of how formative evaluation research can inform the design of educational computer software products. Used as an illustrative case is a program of formative research conducted on "The Talking Clock," a computer assisted instructional software product designed to help children in kindergarten through second…

This review was a formative assessment project designed to introduce teacher education candidates to many of the concepts and methods related to evaluation and course assessment within the framework of an actual curriculum course. Students were afforded the opportunity to work in simulated curriculum committees. Through informed decision making…

Evaluation can be crucial to help meet the needs and requirements of the teacher, students, and curriculum in distance education. Distance education usually encompasses a wide diversity of students, multi-site classrooms, little opportunity for interaction among students, and unfamiliar technology. Because of these uncertainties, evaluation of…

The Global Education Model (GEM) Project, an undertaking of the Putnam-Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services, is part of a larger effort to link students throughout the United States with their counterparts in other countries. GEM's educational technology is augmented by implementing, testing and analyzing nationally…

Arguing that photo-interviewing yields richer data than that usually obtained from verbal interviewing procedures alone, it is proposed that this method of data collection be added to "standard" methodologies in instructional development research and evaluation. The process, as described in this paper, consists of using photographs of…

In 1981, the Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Board of Education contracted with an External Review Team composed of educators of national stature representing diverse perspectives and experiences to realize a portion of its mission statement, "To provide the board of education, the superintendent of schools, and the general public of Pittsburgh…

This manual is designed to help local school district personnel evaluate programs for gifted pupils. It is not intended to replace evaluation which relies on strict statistical analysis. It can, however, supplement the results of such evaluation or, in the absence of such evaluation, provide a picture of the coherence and consistency of the…

Twenty pairs of students from seven special education resource rooms (elementary and intermediate grades) were assessed on the structure of the instruction they received. Their reading achievement was measured three times during the year. The instructional programs for 10 experimental students were to be based on their teachers' use of continuous…

The authors argue that most current modes of formative and summative teacher evaluation are fundamentally unproductive. Unproductiveness stems from focusing upon efficiency rather than effectiveness, post rather than future performance, individual rather than organizational performance, and authoritarian rather than collegial relationships.…