Findings of a review of research pertaining to federally subsidized school nutrition programs are presented in this report. The review of research, the first phase of the National Evaluation of School Nutrition Programs, is intended to provide guidance for the design of subsequent evaluation (including student, parent, and food administrator…

This volume is one of the products of the knowledge development effort implemented under the mandate of the Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act of 1977. It is a report of an assessment study designed to determine the status and results of the implementation of mixed income experiments at 47 Comprehensive Employment and Training Act…

Under Project Concern minority group children in Hartford, Conn., were bused to 33 elementary schools in five suburban school systems. The goals were to change the de facto desegregation of the inner city schools, to design an effective, supportive educational intervention program to arrest and remediate school failure, and to evaluate the…

The three RMC models endorsed by the U.S. Office of Education for the evaluation of Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I programs are based on narrowly conceived approaches to evaluation--the measurement of cognitive achievement gains. Each model requires the comparison of observed student performance with an estimate of what level of…

Differing attitudes of researchers and preschool teachers towards research in early childhood are discussed in this paper. These differences are seen as arising from causes such as the special training of each group and the nature of the work they do, the distribution of the sexes in each group and the social institutions which back them. The…

The Franklin Pierce School District, a semi-rural, semi-urban district located south of Tacoma, Washington, was one of the Experimental School Projects (ESP) initially funded by the National Institute of Education. The Franklin Pierce ESP provides an optimal learning environment for each student, with special emphasis placed upon transient,…

Reviewing recent research on efforts to improve the quality of public schooling in the United States, this paper focuses on evidence suggesting that negative by-products often accompany innovations and, moreover, that innovators have tended to disregard their capacity for leaving schools in worse condition than they found them. The analysis…

Throwing the proverbial monkey wrench into the machinery "on paper" before a system begins functioning seems to be essential to program evaluation. This activity should be performed by the "resident skeptic" who is familiar with past resistance to change and who, being familiar with a program, is able to foresee theoretical and…

The impact of non-response (NR) in baseline data collection on the ability to analyze treatment effects in Project ALERT (Adolescent Experiences in Resistance Training) was studied. Project ALERT is a multisite, multiyear test of a smoking and drug prevention program for seventh and eighth graders. Questionnaires about drug use and related topics…

This document examines the following aspects of the federal administration of evaluation, program improvement, and technical assistance under Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act: (1) changes in each of the three areas since 1981 when Chapter 1 replaced Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; (2) activities…

Offered in response to a request for background information from the Congressional Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Technology, the document presents a report of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) support for social and psychological sciences research. Major objectives of the report are to review the origins of NSF support programs;…

A model for research and evaluation in outdoor education is presented in this paper which includes a bibliography of representative research in outdoor, experiential education. The model stresses close interaction between program designers and evaluators and rests on the premise that the strength of outdoor education--interaction between people,…

Arguing that summaries of 562 studies from 1985 through 1994 reveal that almost no attention is paid to the cognitive effects of Head Start programs, this report criticizes Head Start as being steadily and more generously funded without evidence that it helps children's scholastic achievements. The report criticizes available studies as practicing…

This study examined the extent to which data are available for 77 indicators for all students, including students with disabilities, at the school completion level. Data managers from 36 states or territories reported that data are available for indicators in the Presence and Participation domain and the Contribution and Citizenship domain, but…

The practice of interviewing individuals rather than groups has been based largely upon methodological concerns for preventing contamination of data. The assumptions that (1) the data provided by individuals can, in aggregate, yield social truth; (2) individuals are conscious of social phenomena; and (3) the whole of social reality is equal to the…