This study was conducted to examine the need and feasibility of creating a unique evaluation Web site to support the needs of districts and schools recently funded under the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program (CSRD). The federal requirement that CSRD funded schools and districts carry out comprehensive evaluation of their reform…

This guide is designed to help school communities make good choices about early literacy intervention. The guide distinguishes between "reading" (a process of learning to decode and comprehend texts) and a broader concept of "literacy" that includes understanding of the value of language and reading (emergent literacy), the…

The advent of welfare reform in the United States has provided new challenges in preparing adults to become economically self-sufficient. As one response to this challenge, the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) in Louisville, Kentucky began the Family Independence Initiative in 1997 to promote family literacy as one solution for assisting…

This report presents San Antonio College's (Texas) Student Support Program review, which is intended to ensure quality programs in four areas: Admissions, Assessment Center, Counseling, and Services for Special Populations and Student Activities. This report is divided into four parts: (1) introduction; (2) the program review process; (3) the…

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was designed in 1997 to support working families by providing affordable, quality health coverage for their children in an efficient, effective, and coordinated way. This report examines the progress made in implementing CHIP nationwide. Information sources included the following: (1) federal…

The Impact Monster is a skit designed to teach minimum impact techniques and used as a wilderness education tool by federal land management agencies. During the skit, which features role playing by the audience, an "impact monster" demonstrates inappropriate behavior in a wilderness area and a "good guy" corrects the behavior.…

The Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project (LAAMP) has several initiatives, including Parents as Learning Partners (PLP), that attempt to assist parents and schools to work collaboratively in order to increase student achievement. Using PLP, one of LAAMP's major parent engagement initiatives, as a model, this paper discusses using both…

While the benefits of arts involvement are increasingly clear, policies and practices consistent with this recognition are not proceeding apace. Nearly half of the schools in the United States have no full-time arts teachers, and emphases on standards and standardized testing have eliminated the arts in many urban schools. This case study of a…

The Abuse Prevention program of the Santa Barbara (California) public schools has been providing presentations to students for the past 18 years. This study examined the impact of this abuse prevention program through the self-reports of former participants. Data were collected from 138 high school students, 84 of whom were male. Approximately…

Family resource centers (FRC) are emerging as a promising program approach to solving urgent social problems. Evaluation plays an important role in learning how these programs work, what their impact is, and whether they should be expanded. However, FRCs pose unique challenges to evaluation. This report considers the challenges to evaluating FRCs,…

Selecting programs, textbooks, and curriculum materials is one of the most important decisions educators make. An Expert Panel on Mathematics and Science was established by the U.S. Department of Education to develop a high-quality, research-based process for selecting programs and to use that selecting process to identify exemplary and promising…

Civic education seeks to engage students in their communities by teaching them the necessary skills to effectively participate in society. The middle school years are a crucial time for the development of civic roles and responsibilities. The report documents "We the People...Project Citizen," a national civic education program for…

This book describes an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of model school-based drug prevention programs at reducing cocaine consumption. It compares prevention's cost-effectiveness with that of several enforcement programs and with that of treating heavy cocaine users. It also assesses the cost of nationwide implementation of model prevention…

This report presents evaluation results of the Learn and Serve America, Higher Education (LSAHE) federal initiative. The report addresses the impact of LSAHE on students, communities, and higher education institutions, and is based on data collection and observation from fiscal 1995 through fiscal 1997. The broad goals of LSAHE are to: engage…

The "CSE Program Evaluation Kit" is a series of nine books intended to assist people conducting program evaluations. This volume, the fourth in the kit, explains the basic assumptions underlying qualitative procedures, suggests evaluation situations where qualitative designs are useful, and provides guidelines for designing qualitative…