Since 1970, quality assurance, or outcomes assessment, has provided guidance for improving pedagogy, curricula and student support programmes in the US. But evidence that student learning has improved remains elusive. Large-scale long-term studies are needed to demonstrate the effects of outcomes assessment on learning.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) uses a suite of assessment tools to guide and reinforce a cycle of activities that creates an institutional culture of planning and decision making based on evidence. This cycle includes institutional planning (goal setting), implementation of plans, assessment of outcomes, use of findings…

The Tennessee Nutrition Education and Training (NET) program is part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to develop a coordinated nutrition education program for children from preschool through grade 12. In its first year of operation, the Tennessee NET program conducted summer nutrition education workshops for elementary teachers and…

This report presents an evaluation of the career education leadership activities conducted in Tennessee in 1979-80, the first year of operation for Tennessee's five-year State Plan for Career Education. Section 1 addresses the relationship between the activities in the State Plan and a state-wide needs assessment. Sections 2-7 focus on assessment…

The Tennessee Nutrition Education and Training (NET) program is part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to develop a coordinated nutrition education program for children from preschool through grade 12. For this second-year evaluation, researchers associated with the University of Tennessee collected data for the evaluation of program…

This paper describes an evaluation of the Child Health and Development Project (CHDP), a home-based early intervention program designed to promote parenting skills and to foster the physical, social, and intellectual development of children from birth through 6 years. The project served families from six counties in East Tennessee through funding…

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a federally funded series of career education workshops for school-based teams of principals, counselors, and teachers. In this study, the authors hypothesize that both school effectiveness and effective implementation of innovations such as career education within the school have some common…

This five-part volume presents a comprehensive collection of 24 accounts of campus assessment practices by the individuals who developed and implemented them. Part 1 presents the stories of five institutions in which assessment has effected a marked change in the way faculty and staff do their work. Part 2 describes some of the broad approaches to…

A team of evaluators assessed the implementation of the Career Education Incentive Act in Tennessee during the period from the fall of 1979 through January 1981. Using a series of standardized reporting forms as well as telephone and personal interviews with local project directors, evaluators collected data pertaining to 20 local projects carried…

Data from individual final project reports and evaluation reports prepared by external evaluators were compiled to evaluate the 17 local projects that were conducted in Tennessee during 1980-81 under the provisions of the Career Education Incentive Act. Included among those areas examined during the evaluation were the following: project…

The Bureau of Educational Research and Service at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) conducted the 1981-82 evaluation of the Tennessee Nutrition Education and Training Program. Instruments developed, field tested, and revised by the UTK team were used to assess the nutrition knowledge, attitudes, practices, and perceptions of students…

A three-year trial of a voluntary quinmester plan for extending the school year began in June 1974 in five Knox County, Tennessee, schools. Curriculum revision, K-12, was the principal thrust of the ESY (Extended School Year) project, but administrators also hoped to relieve overcrowding in the schools and to effect more efficient use of…

Evaluation questionnaires were administered to more than 92 percent of the professional staff associated with the Knox County Extended School Year (ESY) Program during the summer and fall of 1974 and to more than half of the students enrolled in the summer quinmester, along with a random sample of 10 percent of the students enrolled in October…

An experiment of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission is outlined that allocated up to 5 percent of an institution's annual state funding for awarding on the basis of demonstrated accomplishment in five performance areas. A project funded by the Kellogg Foundation to increase the use of student outcome information in institutional planning is…

In March 1976 the Knox County school board cut short Tennessee's only recent experiment in year-round education because only 12 percent of the 5,500 students in the 5 West Knox County schools involved in the 3-year trial elected to attend the summer quinmester of the 5-quin school year. (AUTHOR)