School improvement might be initiated by state or district mandate, or it might be motivated by the concerns of school personnel. Teachers and administrators frequently enter the process with some idea of what needs to be reformed or improved, but issues can be overemphasized or overlooked if the process does not begin with a comprehensive needs…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Mission Accomplished! The Development of a Competence-based E-portfolio Assessment Model (Shelley Schuurman, Scott Berlin, Jamie Langlois, and Julie Guevara); (2) The Third Rail of Assessment--Dangerous but Powerful (Dale L. Mort); (3) Video Killed the Radio…

This issue of The Evaluation Exchange explores the promising practices and challenges associated with taking an enterprise to scale, along with the role that evaluation can and should play in that process. Surprisingly few examples exist of nonprofit efforts that have scaled up and achieved lasting success. A program or approach may be strong…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

The U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention publishes "Catalyst," a newsletter covering current Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence (AODV) prevention issues at institutions of higher education. "Catalyst" discusses emerging issues and highlights…

This issue of "Early Developments" is devoted to program evaluation, a type of work that many at FPG are engaged in, either conducting evaluations or helping agencies and states conduct evaluations. Many readers know FPG for its research in prevention, early intervention, child care, and child and family development, but in the past several years,…

Increasingly, out-of-school time programs are being asked to provide data that documents their progress and demonstrates their results. But for many OST programs and their over-worked staff this added responsibility is the "straw that broke the camel?s back." Across the country there is a cry from programs for help in deciding what to measure and…

This issue of "The Evaluation Exchange" focuses on out-of-school time (OST). Several authors provide insights into how they, and others, are tackling measurement issues, from using technology and data systems to collect information and track progress, to applying lessons learned from developing early childhood quality measures. Other authors…

This double issue of "The Evaluation Exchange" focuses on one of the central components of complementary learning: family involvement. As outlined in the Theory & Practice article, investments in family involvement are important across ages and settings and through the co-constructed efforts and shared responsibilities of many…