As one of the longest running programs of its type, Wisconsin's private school voucher program has garnered decades of research interest, including a recent research report from School Choice Wisconsin, boldly titled "Wisconsin's Most Cost-Effective K-12 Program." The report concludes that voucher-receiving schools in three studied areas…

The articles in this special issue discuss efforts to improve academic reading outcomes for students and ways to achieve high implementation fidelity of promising strategies. At times the authors discuss if--and how--strong fidelity is associated with strong outcomes and potentially even impacts (the difference between program and control group…

On September 17, 2013 (Constitution Day), the C3 Framework was released under the title "The College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History." The C3 Project Director and lead writer was NCSS member Kathy Swan, who is…

Candi Mascia Reed is a retired principal of programs for deaf and hard of hearing students in the Total Communication programs of Bergen County Special Services in the Hackensack School District in New Jersey. Currently, she is an adjunct professor at The College of New Jersey, Special Education Language and Literacy, Deaf Education Teacher…

Ultimately, measures in research, testing, assessment and evaluation are used, or have implications, for ranking, intervention, feedback, decision-making or policy purposes. Explicit recognition of this fact brings the often-ignored and sometimes maligned concept of consequences to the fore. Given that measures have personal and social…

In this commentary, we examine Braverman's insights into the trade-offs between feasibility and rigor in evaluation measures and reject his assessment of the trade-off as a zero-sum game. We, argue that feasibility and policy salience are, like reliability and validity, intrinsic to the definition of a good measure. To reduce the tension between…

Exciting developments for New Zealand education have provided opportunities recently for teachers and other educators to express their professional aspirations in assessment. The mantle of fostering teachers' professionalism through strong relationships across the education sector and relevant stakeholder groups, and the provision of timely…

Foubert, Godin, and Tatum describe qualitative effects among college men of The Men's Program, a one-session sexual violence prevention program. This article and the program it describes are representative of many sexual violence prevention programs that are in practice and provide an opportunity for a brief discussion of the development and…

Most of the applied drama and theatre projects being carried out in African contexts tend to be one-off events with limited follow-up in terms of building the capacity of target communities and organising them for action. Besides bringing people together for workshops, performances and post-performance discussions, such projects simply pass by…

In this article, the authors provide an overview and critically analyze three successful faculty-developed urban K-12 science outreach programs. They consider a successful outreach program as one that has been sustained for at least five years after initial funding, and has provided empirically-based research findings from the program.…

Linking evaluation methods to the several phases of a program's life cycle can provide evaluation planners and funders with guidance about what types of evaluation are most appropriate over the trajectory of social and educational programs and other interventions. If methods are matched to the needs of program phases, evaluation can and should…

In "The Case for Participatory Evaluation in an Era of Accountability" (this issue), Jill Chouinard highlights seven tensions between the participatory and technocratic approaches to evaluation. She suggests that there is a need to create opportunities for more participatory approaches to evaluation. In this essay, I suggest that the era of…

Alfie Kohn (http://www.alfiekohn.org) writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. "Time" described him as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." He is the author of 12 books, including "The Schools Our Children Deserve, The Case…

It is time to replace the examination regime at 16 and 18 by something more appropriate. The coalition government has been solidifying its place by its Baccalaureate reforms at both ages, but this is a move in quite the wrong direction. Whatever the wider purposes that the examination system may serve, its core aim is to find out how well students…

This article provides a transcript of an interview with Olivia Gude, member of the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards Writing Team. In the interview, Gude provides an overview of the process for writing the new visual arts standards.