Access to Head Start has been shown to improve children's preschool experiences and school readiness on selected factors through the end of 1st grade. Two more years of follow-up, through the end of 3rd grade, can now be examined to determine whether these effects continue into the middle elementary grades. The statistical design and impact…

A passion to ensure the educational and life success of all children, particularly young African American men, has propelled my work for all of my professional life. Although following one's passion can make for a fulfilling life, passion is not enough to create a successful and sustainable nonprofit organization. Like many leaders in the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a project designed to empower fathers to take a more active role in their child's academic literacy development. The fathers were parents of children enrolled in Early Head Start or Head Start programs. Data sources included transcribed interviews with fathers, the facilitator's journal, and…

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has expended considerable effort to ensure high quality in data collection by developing standardized materials and survey operation procedures and using well-trained professional administrators. However, schools are allowed to minimize the disruption associated with pulling students out of…

Measurement in early childhood is an increasingly large-scale endeavor addressing purposes of accountability, program improvement, child outcomes, and intervention decision making for individual children. The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure relevant to intervention decision making for infants and toddlers, including response to…

The school accountability movement has led to a marked increase in the use of standardized test scores to measure school and teacher productivity, yet little is known about the correlation between test score gains and improvements in long-term outcomes. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I study the impact of a school choice policy in…

The inclusion of young children with disabilities has remained a function of the Head Start program since its inception in the 1960s when the United States Congress mandated that children with disabilities comprise 10% of the Head Start enrollment (Zigler & Styfco, 2000). Standardized, norm-referenced tests used to identify children with…

THE DIMENSIONS OF PROGRAM EVALUATION ARE OUTLINED, SOME NON-TEST METHODS WHICH CAN BE USED ARE DESCRIBED, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MONITORING AND CONTROLLING THE INTERVENTION ARE STRESSED. THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAMWORK BETWEEN EVALUATORS AND INTERVENTIONISTS IS ILLUSTRATED AND THE VALUE OF SUCH AN APPROACH IN FURTHERING THE CLEAR CONCEPTUALIZATION AND…

The attainment of curricular goals, rather than improved IQ scores, was the basis for evaluation of the effectiveness of a program for disadvantaged preschoolers. Featured is the development of an Inventory of Cognitive Skills and Visual-Motor Functioning to evaluate the child's level of functioning in curriculum-related areas. (KW)

Ensuring that all Arizona children receive the high-quality education they deserve requires an effective teacher in every classroom along with school and district leadership that is focused on raising student achievement. Arizona's educators, from the classroom teacher to the district superintendent, are the most important component of the state's…

Parent Child Development Center (PCDC) programs are designed for mothers and young children with goals similar to those of earlier compensatory education programs: to enhance the development of young children and to try to offset educational and occupational problems associated with poverty. The basic strategy is preventative: helping parents…

Existing evidence on the Milwaukee Project, an early intervention effort with preschool disadvantaged children, suggests a decline of the experimental children to the level of the untreated controls in those measures, such as school reading, not under the control of the project. (DB)

This report presents a technical history of the national evaluation study of the Follow Through Planned Variation Model. The last in a five volume series dealing with Follow Through evaluation activities, this volume is devoted to examining the major issues confronting the evaluation and the attempts made to resolve these issues. Chapter I…

This National Institute of Education (NIE) study of compensatory education, and evaluation of Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I is a response to congressional evaluation needs. The report traces the origin of Title I and the congressional interest in its evaluation. Prior efforts to assess the effectiveness of Title I, congressional…