AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., is working to close the achievement gap before children enter kindergarten by providing 3- and 4-year-olds with the social, emotional, and academic foundations that enable them to thrive in school--and increasing educator effectiveness is a critical…

This adaptive methodological inquiry explored the affordances and constraints of one TESOL teacher education program in Libya as a conflict zone. Data was collected through seven documents and 33 questionnaires. Questionnaires were gathered from the investigated program's teacher-educators, student-teachers, and graduates, who were in-service…

This report describes common and unique approaches that Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest Region states have adopted in developing and implementing their quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs). A QRIS is a method for assessing, improving, and communicating the quality of early childhood education and care providers. The study…

This single-site case study describes the outcomes and lessons learned from the implementation of a technology professional development initiative aimed at helping three special education teachers from an urban elementary school learn how to infuse technology in their content literacy instruction. Three types of qualitative data were collected:…

Making the program theory explicit is an essential first step in Theory Driven Evaluation (TDE). Once explicit, the program logic can be established making necessary links between the program theory, activities, and outcomes. Despite its importance evaluators often encounter situations where the program theory is not explicitly stated. Under such…

Distributed learning (DL) is a key element of the Army's training strategy, and the Army has ambitious goals for expanding the future use of DL and for changing how it is developed and delivered. Program-level evaluation of DL can play an essential role in accomplishing those goals and in identifying strategic directions for the overall program.…

The editor lists 10 points which form the basis of some recommendations for those conducting studies that measure effectiveness. The criteria are a consensus of ideas presented by the authors in this volume. (Author/DWH)

An evaluation of application of the conceptual mapping technique (Inglis, 2003) to the team-based design of fourteen courses in an Engineering undergraduate program is described. The evaluation employed a method of scoring each conceptual map against criteria tied to the objectives of the design process. The evaluation method was found to be…

Program documentation is an important role for evaluation in both formative and summative modes. It should describe processes, materials, participants and social interactions which produce certain outcomes. Program evaluation should judge the effect of the program and depict effective practices, products and outcomes. To demonstrate program…

This paper reviews selected literature on education/business partnerships (EBPs), highlighting the status of partnership evaluations and current methodologies. Research by S. Otterbourg and D. Adams (1989), which surveyed about 24 EBPs to ascertain planning, implementation, and evaluation priorities, showed that only 25% of the programs used…

Quality measures were originally developed for research aimed at describing the settings that children spend time in and identifying the characteristics of these environments that contribute to children's development. They were also developed to guide improvements in practice. Increasingly, however, measures of quality are being used for further…

The Department of Labor (DOL), Employment and Training Administration (ETA), awarded its final round of Job Training Partnership Act, Title IV, Pilot and Demonstration Grant Program funds for the Youth Opportunity Area Out-of-School Youth (YOA OSY) program in April 1999. Four of the 5 programs were audited in 2000. This audit is a follow-up to the…

The National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC) convened a meeting of 23 stakeholders representing a national cross-section of experts in the fields of health and education on April 30, 2004. Among the participants were school health practitioners, educators, researchers, and funders. The meeting's purpose was to clarify and document…