Describes the Southern Interscholastic Press Association's (SIPA) evaluation service for student publications. (SR)

The techniques of program evaluation parallel the historian's methods, which usually consist of mining both qualitative and quantitative sources. Test scores, questionnaires, and unobtrusive measures provide good quantitative data, whereas interviews supply important qualitative information. Researcher involvement in the project being assessed can…

The nine articles of this theme issue provide overviews of legislative program evaluation and demonstrate the tensions caused by the conflict between utility and rigor in such evaluations. Legislative evaluation is concerned with evaluation utilization because legislators commission evaluations they expect to use. (SLD)

Based on concerns raised at a workshop at the Southern California College of Optometry, addresses critical issues in the process of peer review of faculty teaching and possible alternatives to these issues as applied to an optometric institution. (EV)

Discusses how, when a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas was rejected for tenure over a lack of collegiality, she sued--and raised questions about that criterion. (EV)

While legislative oversight offices, like many evaluation and policy analysis units, face substantial challenges in promoting use of their work by policymakers, they often have not taken steps to overcome these challenges by adopting the strategies suggested by the evaluation literature. Although the offices seek utilization, they have not fully…

The number of schools that have failed to make "adequate yearly progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act is proving to be a moving target, as states clean up erroneous data and grant appeals to schools that challenge the unwanted label. Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that aims to raise students academic…

Quality assurance in instructional development demands an exhaustive formative evaluation effort and applied testing. Unfortunately, this process is expensive and requires large numbers of user testers with characteristics similar to the intended audience. This article presents a procedure for increasing the efficiency of quality assurance efforts…

Although the need for evaluation of prevention programs is clear, the implementation of evaluation, particularly for large, complex projects with multiple investigators, poses numerous challenges. Program evaluators in these circumstances do not have the same degree of control as, say, experimental psychologists and must find ways to obtain data…

In compliance with California's Proposition 10 (Children and Families First Act), county commissions are being asked to monitor what differences the family support programs they are funding are making in the lives of the children and families they serve. Each commission has the responsibility of selecting a set of indicators to measure the impact…

Describes the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and reviews and assesses research on its impact. Recommends policy reforms and randomized experiments to evaluate the program and any changes made to it. Weaknesses in research to date make the real impacts of WIC unclear. (Contains 79 references.) (SLD)

Describes and illustrates techniques for assessing productivity in colleges and universities; defines cost analysis and discusses specific techniques of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis; and discusses related issues in higher education. Use of these techniques is illustrated by a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Massachusetts) program…

Describes recent developments in United Kingdom politics that have affected development of evidence-based policy for children. Examines the notion of "what works," leading to a suggestion that evaluators be concerned with "what is worth doing" for children. Considers robustness as a guiding principle for evaluation design and…

Drawn by a vision of solving performance problems in a systematic, systemic and results-based approach, training professionals are turning to human performance technology (HPT). However, many who try to implement HPT find themselves struggling to measure the improvements their interventions are designed to achieve. Ford notes that these…

District and school administrators are challenged to provide learning environments that help students attain and surpass set levels of academic and social learning. In times of economic strife, discussions often turn to the efficient use of financial and human resources to maximize school districts' capacity to fulfill those objectives. Most…