This study focuses on the second round of Taiwanese teacher preparation program (TPP) evaluation (2012-2017) to analyze how evaluation policy shapes TPPs. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 stakeholders, which included professors, administrators, researchers, and staff involved in TPP evaluation. First, the findings revealed that…

Many inquiries regarding the causal effects of policies or programs are based on research designs where the treatment assignment process is unknown, and thus valid inferences depend on tenuous assumptions about the assignment mechanism. This article draws attention to the importance of understanding the assignment mechanism in policy and program…

Describes the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's implementation of an evaluation research-driven quality assurance process for Florida's juvenile justice educational programs. Reviews the literature on juvenile justice educational practices and describes the educational quality assurance standards and annual modifications that draw…

Federal evaluations in education contributed in numerous and important ways to changes in law, regulation, and management. Information about implementation contributed most often, but information about outcomes, cost, and federal administration also made contributions. These findings differ from previous research that concluded evaluations do not…

This article considers the advantages and disadvantages of having evaluation users increase the specificity of evaluation requirements through a review of legislative requirements behind several congressionally mandated national-level evaluations, and an in-depth examination of one congressionally mandated evaluation in which very specific design…

A student-centered evaluation of the California Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Education (DATE) program shows how a state policy directed toward students at risk influences program directions and affects at-risk and thriving students. Reasons to question the validity of the risk factor model as a prevention tool are discussed. (SLD)

Presents preliminary evaluation findings from Florida's Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program that explore the relationships between educational program quality and program characteristics. Several program characteristics are found to be related to measurements of educational program quality, including proportion of teachers who are…

Provides an overview and a context leading to Florida's efforts to implement an evaluation-driven research and associated quality assurance system for its juvenile justice education policies and practices. The Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program described began implementing Florida's evaluation research and quality assurance system in…

Describes two stages of the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's pre-, post-, and longitudinal evaluation research and reports on the pilot studies used to explore how to design statewide research on pre- and post-assessment scores and community reintegration outcomes. Findings suggest that higher performing programs produce greater…

Discusses the evaluation of juvenile justice education through Florida's Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program as it involves the integration of multiple data sources. Examines the methodological, political, and bureaucratic obstacles encountered in the development of this evaluation system. (SLD)

Examines the role of politics in the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's effort to use evaluation research data to inform Florida's juvenile justice education policies and practices. Two examples illustrate that by maintaining an overriding commitment to its evaluation research purpose, the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement…

Active parental consent policies have been blamed for low participation rates and selection bias (i.e., loss of "high-risk" youths) in school-based studies. In this article, the authors describe active consent procedures that produced an overall active consent rate of 79% in a sample of more than 4,500 middle school students attending 29…

Four steps to curriculum innovation are outlined: (1) identifying descriptive dimensions; (2) specifying practices implied by the innovation; (3) describing actual practices; and (4) comparing actual with intended practices across the critical dimensions of beliefs, objectives, instructional materials, and teaching strategies. (Author/CP)

The histories of five multisite, qualitative policy studies were examined to see how much variation in formalization reflected the technical requirements of the research problem, the demands of the federal client, and the preferences of the project team and its professional network. (Author/PN)

A study involving 1,800 teachers and 180 headmasters assessed the nature and scope of activities and problems associated with implementing federally mandated continuous educational assessment activities at the primary school level in Nigeria. Findings indicate that continuous assessment is preferred to the narrower one-shot evaluation. (TJH)