Many school personnel are becoming increasingly frustrated with the impact of student behavior on their schools. More than ever, the public perception is that student behavior is out of control. Although isolated instances of violence (e.g., school shootings) contribute to this perception, people are most concerned with the lack of discipline and…

Background: Coaches and physical educators must obtain valid data relating to the contribution of each of their players in order to assess their level of performance in team sport competition. This information must also be collected and used in real game situations to be more valid. Developed initially for a physical education class context, the…

This study examined outcomes for faculty and community partners of a gerontological curriculum enrichment effort at a midwestern state university. The study was supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation. Faculty from three academic centers around the state were involved in revising the foundation (core) curriculum. Community practitioners from…

There are few topics more controversial in higher education than the evaluation of teaching effectiveness. The continuing relevancy of issues relating to what constitutes an effective teacher and methods by which to measure such effectiveness is evidenced by the more than 2,000 articles devoted to this topic by researchers in a wide variety of…

During the 2006 Spring semester, student affairs administrators at West Virginia University called on all student affairs units to develop assessment plans that focused on student learning. Student affairs units were required to begin their assessment plans by selecting at least one learning outcome to measure. The Assessment Council, ten…

The applicability of conventional measurement techniques in the assessment and evaluation of a middle school educational program has been disputed. The objectives of this program include assisting students in the development of several areas. Among these are independence, healthy self concepts, viable ethical and value systems, socially…

This collection of papers presents a representative selection of the National Institute of Justice's portfolio of gang-related research. The 10 papers are: (1) "A Decade of Gang Research: Findings of the National Institute of Justice Gang Portfolio" (Scott H. Decker); (2) "The Evolution of Street Gangs: An Examination of Form and…

Under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, 22 urban school districts have been involved in a long-term educational reform through the Urban Systemic Initiative (USI) program since 1994. This paper presents a brief summary of findings regarding best policies and practices in the educational reform effort focusing on student…

Special emphasis is given to the kinds of control that can be exercised over initial status, including the use of proxy input data. A rationale for the classification scheme is developed, based on (1) three one-shot, one cross-sectional, and two longitudinal data types and (2) two types of referencing: criterion referencing and norm referencing.…

Describes the use of administrative data in support of a project to develop outcome measures for the Children and Youth Division of the Department of Human Services in Philadelphia, focusing on safety and permanency indicators for the in-home services program. Considers issues of data file construction and analysis, baseline results for in-home…

To what extent are the discourse behaviors of examiners salient to participants of an oral performance test? This exploratory study employs a grounded ethnographic approach to investigate the perceptions of the verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal discourse behaviors of an examiner in a one-on-one role-play task that is one of four tasks in an…

Libraries devote serious resources to user-education programs and need to measure their effectiveness with hard data. This guide was designed to simplify the evaluation planning process and the making of evaluation instruments. The material was developed from hundreds of survey instruments used by librarians around the country. The handbook…

The Curriculum Assessment and Development Project in the Virginia Beach (Virginia) Public Schools is summarized. It was a comprehensive study involving students, parents, teachers, and administrators in considering two key curricular questions: "What kind of person do we want to produce?" and "What knowledge is of most worth?"…

Examines problem areas of training needs analysis (TNA), first by presenting a model of the TNA process, then by listing sources of data available for TNA (based on an analysis of the literature), and finally by proposing a method of choosing appropriate data-gathering techniques for TNA. (CT)