The paper will present findings from a Social Science and Humanities Research (SSHRC) funded participatory evaluation conducted over the past four years in the Cree nation of Wemindji in Quebec, Canada. COOL (Challenging Our Own Limits) or "Nigawchiisuun" in Cree, was launched in 2003 as part of a broader program of governance…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) has developed a system aiming to effectively place students in freshman and developmental English programs. The placement system includes: triangulating data from external test scores, with scores from a panel-marked hand-written essay (HWE),…

Colorado State University (CSU) is located in Fort Collins, which is a midsize city of 134,000 situated in Northern Colorado at the western edge of the Great Plains and at the base of the Rocky Mountains. CSU's total enrollment is approximately 25,000 students. The Division of Student Affairs comprises 30 departments organized into programmatic…

In many school districts, the pressure to raise test scores has created overnight celebrity status for formative assessment. Its powers to raise student achievement have been touted, however, without attending to the research on which these claims were based. Sociocultural learning theory provides theoretical grounding for understanding how…

How can indigenous evaluators implement culturally competent models in First Nations communities while ensuring that government grant evaluation requirements are met? Through describing the challenges in one tribal community in the United States, this article will discuss how American Indian/Alaska Native substance abuse prevention programs are…

This article describes the planning of a multi-agency and multi-stakeholder evaluation of the implementation of supportive housing. The Ottawa Housing"Plus" Collaborative Communities project is a collaboration between university-based evaluators and members of a local network of supportive housing providers. The objectives of the…

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…

This paper discusses the use of peer debriefing to assist evaluators in their efforts to address project-end dilemmas and presents the implications of findings in this area for program evaluators and qualitative researchers. Peer debriefing has been defined as the process of exposing oneself to a disinterested peer to explore aspects of the…

This paper discusses the design of a program by the Nashville (Tennessee) Center for Independent Living (CIL) to train consumers with disabilities in employing, training, supervising, and firing personal attendants. The program, supported by the Tennessee Developmental Disabilities (DD) Planning Council, provided an opportunity for program design…

Managers and program sponsors are often unaware of possible alternatives to costly training evaluation procedures and do not have criteria for selecting alternatives. What is needed is an understanding of the various levels of evaluating training programs, feasible alternatives, and decision criteria for choosing the right system. It is proposed…

Evaluation Voices is an approach to evaluation that assumes that programs with similar goals can strengthen their evaluation strategies through cluster networking as they build evaluation expertise from within. Evaluators focus on a process that: (1) begins with program staff and stakeholders sharing their vision for the program; (2) recognizes…

A model of evaluation planning, implementation, and management is presented that includes: (1) a management information system (MIS) to provide a description of the size and scope of adult literacy and post-literacy programs (ALPPs); (2) naturalistic evaluation to provide insight into the meanings of ALPPs as experienced by participants; and (3)…

Program development evaluation should focus on articulating theoretical rationales for program design and activities. To assist the managers of 17 school-based delinquency prevention projects (School Action Effectiveness Study) in developing theories of action, the Program Development Evaluation (PDE) method was utilized. To construct the…

The report provides summary evaluative data on 18 federally funded special education projects in Boston involving more than 2,518 students, 632 parents, and 1,535 school staff. An introductory section provides background information on funding and levels of services provided to handicapped students in the Boston public schools. Section 2 focuses…

The monitoring guide is designed to insure that local education agencies (LEAs) are meeting the mandate to provide a free, appropriate public education for handicapped students; and to assist public agencies in complying with applicable statutes, rules, and regulations to maximize program effectiveness. An introductory section offers a policy…