The issue of program quality must be paramount on state educational agendas if the America 2000 preschool goal--that all children start school ready to learn--is to be attained. This paper describes four types of preschool programs (Project Head Start, Montessori, public preschools, and private day cares) and reviews the evidence on their…

Although most school districts and schools are routinely involved in data collection, they do not typically use the data they collect in a systematic fashion to identify strengths and weaknesses and develop improvement strategies. One reason for the lack of data use is the perception that the data are being collected for someone else's purposes.…

Christopher Newport College, begun as a colony of the College of William and Mary, was born in the 1960s out of the fervor to open the doors of higher education to more people. It enrolls between 500-600 students in freshman writing courses each semester. Changes to the freshman composition program were undertaken, beginning in 1994, with a shift…

Noting that family literacy is an intergenerational approach to education that addresses the needs of both the adult and child learner, this booklet presents aspects of family literacy programs and steps to help ensure the program's success. After discussing the need for family literacy, the book discusses the effectiveness of family literacy and…

This document is designed to help local and state educators improve their vocational education accountability systems, as mandated by the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act of 1990. The handbook is organized in three parts. Part I focuses on measuring the success of programs serving students who are members of special…

This project proposal describes a pilot project, "Regional Course Sharing Through Technology," at Chadron State College, Nebraska, which utilizes telecommunications to enable small, rural schools to share teaching staff among several schools. Away from the highly populated urban areas of Nebraska, most school districts are widely…

An expanded vision of evaluation is offered that accommodates the use of both descriptive information and evaluative information, and which connects evaluation in the naturalistic paradigm with evaluation in the rationalistic paradigm for making informed decisions within programs of education and development. The model of "Information Development…

This booklet is intended as an introductory guide to community-based rehabilitation (CBR) services in developing nations. The first section examines the magnitude of the problem; the failure of existing services to meet this challenge; and the need for a model appropriate to developing countries. The second section briefly describes the CBR…

In 1990, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development convened a Task Force to guide the work on a new Project on Youth Development and Community Programs. The major goals of this project are to expand the scope and availability of developmentally appropriate, community-based services for young adolescents, particularly those in high-risk…

This publication provides evaluative information to decision makers at the state and local levels to assist in making judgments about the extent to which the goals of the Model Career Options Program (MCOP) were attained. The MCOP goals are: (1) to provide an opportunity for teachers to expand their professional horizons and explore new avenues in…

This document, which is intended to assist adult literacy staff development and training personnel working at the state, district, and program levels, contains considerations and guidelines essential for an effective, comprehensive staff development and training program. Discussed in Section 1, which is an overview of staff development and…

This document considers both self-examination and external evaluation of gifted and talented education programs. Principles of the self-examination process are offered, noting similarities to external evaluation models. Principles of self-evaluation efforts include the importance of maintaining a nonjudgmental orientation, soliciting views from…

This document presents the final report on the evaluation of California's model student assistance program (SAP) demonstration projects implemented in five locations across the state from July 1989 through June 1992. The report provides an overall, integrated review of the evaluation of the SAP demonstration projects, summarizes important findings…

This guide describes the Comprehensive Guidance Program model and outlines a process for tailoring the program model to meet the needs of the vast array of Texas public schools. It provides quality program standards designed to enhance district and campus efforts to improve the guidance programs in order to more effectively guide the development…

The purpose of Project CMYC (Catch Me if You Can) was to develop and test a model for longitudinal study of local (Texas) Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) program graduates and their families. The model called for comparison of ECI graduates and families to a group of children with similar disabilities and of comparable age, who had not…