Child Trends contracted with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to conduct an independent evaluation of Parent Aware, Minnesota's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. The evaluation includes several legislatively mandated research activities designed to assess the…

Job Corps is the largest and most comprehensive education and job training program in the United States for young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school and are not working. To deepen the Job Corps program's ability to generate and use evidence to improve the labor market trajectories of eligible young people, this report discusses ways Job…

This essay highlights the value of an applied methodology course in program evaluation in the education doctorate program by exploring several benefits that it offers to enhance a doctoral student's ability to solve complex problems of practice. Observations and recommendations are made based on designing and teaching two cohorts of EdD students…

There are large gaps in educational access and attainment between the rich and poor in the United States. In 2016, there was a 25 percentage-point gap in college enrollment rates for high school graduates in the top and bottom family income quartiles. Reflections on Connecting Research and Practice in College Access and Success Programs is the…

This article is a summary of a report prepared for the University Council for Educational Administration Program Improvement Project for the Wallace Foundation. This explores the research base for educational leadership preparation programs, specifically examining literature on program features. The review covers context, candidates, faculty,…

Student feedback collected through program evaluation of secondary education licensure and Master's program clinical experiences prompted us to conduct a collective self-study. We used a reflective framework for analysis and discussion of the shifts students in our courses made as they progressed from observers to practicing teachers. Along with…

Business students are increasingly seeking international experience in short-term, study abroad programs to enhance their intercultural knowledge, intercultural communication skills, and global perspectives to be more competitive in the global arena. Intuitively, universities initiating these programs and the students sojourning abroad believe in…

As the only federal funding stream that provides dedicated funds for afterschool programs across the country, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) initiative plays an important role in supporting the innovation that takes place in afterschool programs. Social innovation has been defined as "a novel solution to a social…

This "Research Update" explores two major themes: (1) Using evaluation to shape program improvement and planning; and (2) Out-of-school time benefits to older youth and their families. Themes were culled from 13 research and evaluation reports added to the Out-of-School Time (OST) Program Research and Evaluation Bibliography in September 2008.…

We cite four disconnections among teacher education programmes, research on teaching, and programme assessment that contribute to a paucity of systematically collected evidence and the inability of teacher educators to fully address the "outcomes question" [Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Assessing assessment in teacher education.…

The impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is usually understood in relation to schools and districts, but the legislation has also affected community-based organizations that operate school-linked programs. This case study of an after-school program in California demonstrates how educational accountability systems that emphasize students' academic…

This article discusses how to make process use an independent variable in evaluation practice: the purposeful means of building an organization's capacity to conduct and use evaluations in the long run. The goal of evaluation capacity building (ECB) is to strengthen and sustain effective program evaluation practices through a number of activities:…

Extension education evaluators are concerned about accounting for lack of control over and the value of describing environmental influences when assessing impact. Evaluability assessment (EA) identifies relationships between and describes external influences on program events. It provides information regarding clarity about goals and objectives…

The purpose of the study was to obtain information that would add to the knowledge available to personnel at State and local levels in order to develop recommendations to enhance the performance of the young farmer program. One hundred thirty-eight young farmer chapters constituted the sample for the study and were rated at three levels by area…

Considers why in-service teacher education has been receiving increasing attention in terms of educational priorities, why it has not been succeeding, and how it can become effective. A set of guidelines gathered from five studies, which surveyed and analyzed a wide variety of in-service practices and programs from the national to local school…