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…

With increasing awareness of the importance of teacher quality for student learning, education policy leaders have turned their attention to the nation's teacher training programs as a potential target for reform. One proposed strategy is to increase competition for university-based programs by encouraging new program types. This study examines…

Sixty-four federal Elementary and Secondary School Counseling (ESSC) program grants were awarded in 2009. One awarded school district implemented a comprehensive school counseling program based on the ASCA National Model at three high-needs elementary schools. This case study describes a district initiative that provided prevention education for…

Ever so slowly, the United States is taking a harder look at how its teacher preparation schools are improving the quality of the teachers they produce. The signs are everywhere--from proposed federal action to state legislatures and school boards passing new oversight laws and regulations, to a newly marshaled push for stronger accreditation by…

This new updated fourth edition of "How Good is Our School?" is the result of a wide-ranging consultation through which stakeholders have contributed to the development of a substantially new set of quality indicators and supporting toolkit. This publication is designed to promote effective self-evaluation as the first stage in a process…

Higher-education institutions in Texas are increasingly exploring innovative approaches to structuring and delivering degree programs. Several institutions have developed competency-based degree programs, which aim to offer new pathways for students to obtain postsecondary credentials and to reduce higher-education costs for students by focusing…

Many professors of program evaluation courses look for ways to merge their students' theoretical understanding of program evaluation with practical experience. In this scenario, a professor arranges for his students to evaluate a series of workshops in campus residence halls sponsored by a university diversity center (DC). What follows in this…

Introduction: The physician-intern relationship can be difficult to develop. A new chiropractic intern in a teaching clinic undergoes a major transition from classroom to clinical practice and must learn to turn classroom knowledge into clinical application. The ability to start formulating clinical techniques and apply them on a patient is…

The identification of key elements for effective campus-wide sustainable service-learning programs at faith-based colleges and universities was examined. This qualitative research investigated an extensive range of documents, web sites, and literature to determine the conditions of institutionalization that must be met in conjunction with…

After a brief introduction on community colleges as a pathway to higher education and earnings, the author describes a few approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of policies and programs designed to benefit students and issues to consider in determining standards of evidence. He then presents three examples of programs that have been carefully…

Research completed since the 1980s has yielded substantial knowledge about how to help welfare recipients and other low-income individuals prepare for and find jobs. Many participants in these successful job preparation and placement programs, however, ended up in unstable, low-paying jobs, and little was known about how to effectively help them…