The three RMC models endorsed by the U.S. Office of Education for the evaluation of Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I programs are based on narrowly conceived approaches to evaluation--the measurement of cognitive achievement gains. Each model requires the comparison of observed student performance with an estimate of what level of…

To make educational assessments and comparisons meaningful, dropout data must be collected according to the same definitions, by the same procedures, and over the same time periods. A 31-state pilot project represents an effort by the National Center for Education Statistics to standardize data collection about high school completion. (SLD)

In 1959, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the University of Pittsburgh selected a stratified random probability sample of all secondary schools (public, parochial, and private) in the United States, tested all their students in grades 9-12 with a two-day battery of aptitude tests, information tests, tests of ability and achievement,…

This research study sought to determine the impact of an agricultural leadership program on rural community development beyond self-report survey data typically collected for program evaluation. Two hundred-ninety graduates of a program that taught leadership skills to impact policy at local, state, and national levels to adults aged 25-45 who…

This paper examines whether failure to control for family background, aptitude, high school quality, high school curriculum, and community characteristics leads to bias in estimates of the economic return resulting from postsecondary education. High school specific fixed effects were used to control for all observed and unobserved characteristics…

The findings of the Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes (CQO) study in Child Care Centers, the largest and most visible child care research conducted in the 1990s, were widely publicized and used to promote increased spending on initiatives to improve child care quality, the redesign of subsidy systems to provide quality incentives, more stringent…

Designed to identify exemplary strategies and procedures for assessing employer satisfaction with former vocational education students' training and job performance, this handbook provides ideas for initiating such an assessment and for improving upon current assessment practices. It consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the…

This report offers an analysis of college faculty supply and demand as well as an evaluation of currently available data on this issue. The report was undertaken in response to three concurrent trends which point to significant faculty shortages beginning in 1995. The report begins with a descriptive overview of current faculty demographics that…

This project was conducted to refine and expand previous research indicating the need for an instrument counselors can use in working with area secondary schools and potential students to assess their progress in making career and training decisions. Instruments developed during this research process were pilot tested at two area schools and…

A study examined the feasibility of performing a national cost-benefit analysis of secondary, postsecondary, and adult vocational education. The study involved three components: a survey of the state of the art of utilizing cost-benefit methodologies to evaluate the returns on investments in vocational education; an overview of the potential…

When two groups, initially dissimilar, undergo different treatments, can subsequent differences be partitioned in such a way that the difference between the two treatments is unbiased? This is the central problem of this paper, and it is confronted by the examination of two levels of information using a Follow Through Evaluation. The first…

The extent of employer-supported education and training in Australia was examined by analyzing data from the Training Expenditure Surveys (TES), which gathered information from firms, and the Surveys of Education and Training Experience (SETE), which gathered information from workers. The TES showed an approximately 10% decline in the hours of…

A study done for the National Community Education Advisory Council to assess programs funded under the Community Schools Act is presented in an introduction and three parts. Study goals, as defined in the introduction, are to describe the organization and operation of community education projects of local educational agencies, state educational…

Abstracts are presented of the major conference papers and thematic discussions delivered at the 1978 Measurement and Methodology Conference. The titles of the presentations are: Policy-Responsive Evaluation (Wiley); When Educators Set Standards (Glass); Comments on Wiley and Glass (Schutz); Key Standard-Setting Considerations for Minimal…

In order to make policy decisions, educators must evaluate educational research proposals and projects. Findings immediately related to practice are often inadequate, omitting the theoretical establishment of principles by which we can explain and predict the phenomena of our world. These theoretical linkages to the practical world of…