Despite the desire of employers to hire those with the critical-thinking and communication skills a general education (GE) program can offer, the value of GE programs is often questioned due to concerns about four-year graduation rates, perceived low immediate economic payoff, and a dearth of evidence to support their efficacy. This article…

After months of waiting, the grant reviews came back: "excellent," "excellent," and "fair." What?! How can this be? Why is the third review so out of line with the first two? On more than one occasion a principal investigator (PI) has been frustrated not only by a negative funding decision but more so by the accompanying reviewer evaluation forms…

Designing and implementing assessment instruments are ongoing challenges for physical educators. The initial design phase includes asking the question, "What do I want the students to know and/or be able to do?" Seemingly, the question is direct and should lead to a concrete answer. In addition to designing assessment instruments, one of the most…

Using architectural design as a model, the article discusses the process of evaluation design. Like the architect, the evaluator faces a problem of finding forms that best fit a partially defined set of contextual demands. The context is the set of all factors which made demands upon the final design form. Like the architect, the evaluator's…

In "Holding Accountability to Account: How Scholarship and Experience in Other Fields Inform Exploration of Performance Incentives in Education"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, argues educational…

Much of the evaluation of vocational education at the state and local levels has been conducted in response to federal legislation. Although some of the evaluative information has been useful for program improvement, much has been collected only for compliance with federal and state mandates. The educational reform movement has prompted school…

Program design can aid problem-solving or decision-making tasks faced by evaluators. It can be used to facilitate evaluation planning through the definition of program boundaries and the generation and focusing of evaluation questions. Further, it can provide evaluation information about theoretical, historical, and political contexts of a…

The choice of methods is part of the overall evaluation design process. The process consists of the following steps: (1) analyzing the problem context; (2) asking a few general questions; (3) selecting the methods (strategies) to use; and (4) selecting the specific techniques (tactics) to use. To operate successfully the evaluator needs to know…

Describes the goals of assessment in early childhood education programs, suggesting that assessment plans should focus on knowledge, skills, dispositions, and feelings. Argues that the younger children are, the more errors are made in assessment, and that efforts should therefore balance global and specific assessments. Suggests assessment…

What many educators see as the assistance of a program evaluation is often an intrusion into the governance of the program being evaluated. Redistribution of authority and control occur not only because evaluation findings support one constituency more than another, but the very act of evaluating affords protective status to the initiators of the…

The goals of the International Academic Mobility (IAM) Initiative are to advance the development of international skills, knowledge and understanding among students and promote academic co-operation and institutional linkages among colleges and universities. The IAM Initiative includes the administration of two programs created by Human Resources…