The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos…

In this commentary, we examine Braverman's insights into the trade-offs between feasibility and rigor in evaluation measures and reject his assessment of the trade-off as a zero-sum game. We, argue that feasibility and policy salience are, like reliability and validity, intrinsic to the definition of a good measure. To reduce the tension between…

Evaluation research should be viewed as the source of knowledge on two levels: (1) how evaluation studies utilize results, and (2) how the knowledge that was evaluated is utilized. The purpose of this document is to systematically examine the literature pertinent to the utilization of evaluation results. The impetus for legitimization of…

The present project is aimed at evaluating and describing the quality, uniformity and standards of vocational rehabilitation throughout the state agencies in the United States. The aim is to identify techniques, personnel, practices, programs and services that do and do not substantially contribute to effective vocational rehabilitation of…

Ethical issues; institutional characteristics and organizational arrangements; and roles and skills of the researcher must be considered if the government is to apply social science research findings more widely for the public good. (Available from: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 433 California St., San Francisco, CA 94104, single issue, $6.95.) (Author/GDC)

Teacher educators are in a state of near paralysis concerning their program evaluations. This paralysis comes from adopting wholesale a dysfunctional evaluative point of view from the dominant educational research establishment. There is a history of overestimating the current relevance of experimental behavioral science models for the gathering…

The synthesis presents an initial overview of five investigations of educational dissemination and change in American schools and the implications of these studies for policy making related to federal and state dissemination programs, management of such programs, and needed research, development, and evaluation. A brief synopsis of each study was…

Claims made for case studies are analyzed, and some of the obstacles to using this kind of evaluation information are discussed. The analysis is based on evaluation of a federally funded project which combined the evaluation with attempts to use that information to help other schools. (Author/CTM)

Because of increasing congressional and public concern about child abuse and neglect, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed the federal child welfare services program and related activities. GAO recommends that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) develop a system for evaluating the well-being of children and the…

Four problems underlying the delivery of technical assistance in Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I evaluation are discussed: (1) the dual missions of facilitating the implementation of the Title I Evaluation and Reporting System and of facilitating the local use of evaluation information frequently require tradeoffs between…

A report described the current context, realities, and research and development needs of local level vocational education planning to provide a foundation for improving local level planning technology. Examination of the legislative context for vocational education planning revealed that interagency coordination and consultation, use of data about…

To test the concept of linkage as a means of improving educational practice by more effective utilization of research-based knowledge and resources, the operations of the Merrimack Education Center were compared with the Havelock linkage model. On-site interviews were conducted with Center personnel and written materials were reviewed; school…

Because of various flaws in their design, most research studies that have up to now examined the transition of youth to the work setting have failed to pinpoint ways of improving existing programs. Many of these design flaws (including lack of a uniform set of outcome measures, failure to routinely incorporate control groups, and failure to design…