To help assess the effects of school-based random drug testing programs, the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) contracted with RMC Research Corporation and Mathematica Policy Research to conduct an experimental evaluation of the Mandatory-Random Student Drug Testing (MRSDT) programs in 36 high schools within…

In recent years, some of the most ambitious charter school operators, with the support of philanthropic investors, have sought to increase the scale and scope of their work by creating charter management organizations (CMOs) that aim to replicate effective charter school models across multiple campuses. CMOs are nonprofit organizations with…

The emergence of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) for Quality Assurance has been seen as an important step towards realising the European Higher Education Area by creating more transparency and accountability in the area of quality assurance. The ESG also include standards as to how quality assurance agencies should be reviewed. In a…

The authors report insights, based on annual site visits to elementary and middle schools in three states from 2004 to 2006, into the incentive effect of the No Child Left Behind Act's requirement that increasing percentages of students make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in every public school. They develop a framework, drawing on the physics…

This article describes how to implement the four-phase curriculum review model, a simplified process for renovating a high school health and physical education curriculum. Although this model was used at a large suburban high school, it could be adapted for use by smaller schools or other disciplines. The four phases of this model are: (1) needs…

In this paper, the authors address the question: what are skills, knowledge and professional dispositions that U.S. co-teachers need to balance the seemingly competing mandates of NCLB and IDEIA in order to prepare teachers for the classrooms of today and tomorrow? Based on the results of two recent studies that focused on secondary co-teacher…

The Thai higher education sector has expanded quickly during the past decade, making a transition from an elitist to a mass institution. A driving force behind the expansion was believed to be the Student Loan Fund (SLF), introduced in 1996. During the first 10 years of its operation, the SLF has lent to more than 2.6 million students, with the…

This article uses the framework of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK; Mishra & Koehler, 2006) to analyze findings across projects from the U.S. Department of Education's Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) initiative. Approaches such as mentoring methods course faculty, teachers, and creating technology-rich…

Many out-of-school time programs want to learn more about how the children and youth they serve are faring. Outcome evaluations allow programs to do just that. This brief provides a basic review of outcome evaluations, discusses why they are important and when they are useful, and presents guidelines, strategies, and techniques for their use in…

Harvard Family Research Project's (HFRP) series of "Out-of-School Time Evaluation Snapshots" distills the wealth of information compiled in our Out-of-School Time (OST) Program Research and Evaluation Database into a single report. Each "Snapshot" examines a specific aspect of out-of-school time (OST) evaluation. This "Snapshot" describes…

Accelerated middle schools are self-contained academic programs designed to help middle school students who are behind grade level catch up with their age peers. If these students begin high school with other students their age, the hope is that they will be more likely to stay in school and graduate. The programs serve students who are one to two…

Scaling Effective Programs is a category of giving that is quite unique. Philanthropists have many different interests that guide their giving, but Scaling Effective Programs offers an approach that can produce lasting transformation. This guide speaks to funders who: (1) view their giving as venture capital that stimulates other giving; (2) want…

The authors review the unique characteristics of nonprofit organizations and explain how nonprofit organizations play a prominent role in providing today's public services. The authors describe how the field of professional evaluation developed in response to government performance-based management initiatives, noting that recent efforts at the…

This article describes an effectiveness evaluation of an intensive case management intervention coordinated by a non-profit organization in a midsize Midwest City. As an effectiveness evaluation, the primary evaluation question was causal in nature; the key task of the evaluative study was to establish and probe connections between the…

With the increasing numbers of children who are being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder there are a wide variety of treatment approaches being marketed to vulnerable parents who are desperate to help their child. However, many of these approaches have not been rigorously evaluated and can lead to false hopes, unreasonable fears, or…