Higher education in Louisiana is leading the nation in linking growth of student learning to teacher preparation programs that prepare new teachers. The Louisiana Board of Regents is currently implementing a Value Added Teacher Preparation Assessment. The model examines the degree to which the educational attainment of students taught by recent…

Founded in 1821, Widener University is a two-state (Pennsylvania and Delaware), four-campus, eight-college private institution serving approximately 6,700 students. Following arrival of the new senior vice president and provost in 2004 and subsequent reorganization of vice presidential responsibilities, Student Affairs is now led by a dean of…

The authors explored the credibility of using informal reading inventories and writing samples for 138 students (K-4) to evaluate the effectiveness of a summer literacy program. Running Records (a measure of a child's reading level) and teacher experience during daily reading instruction were used to estimate the reliability of the more formal…

This article discusses the significant contributions of Peter H. Rossi to the field of program evaluation. It was the publication of "Evaluation: A Systematic Approach" by Peter Rossi, Howard Freeman, and Sonia Rosenbaum in 1979 that most emphatically marked the point at which program evaluation had clearly consolidated as a distinct field of…

The problem of bullying has gained attention in recent years. Schools are investing significant resources into antibullying programs, despite scant evidence of program effectiveness. Three hundred ninety-five schools responded to a province-wide survey, whose purpose was (a) to describe the evaluation activities of schools relative to their…

Studies of test dimensionality indicate that many large-scale science assessments measure multiple dimensions. These findings have reinforced the perspective that science achievement is an inherently dynamic process and that there is benefit in reporting subscores in science. A limitation with some of these studies is that they fail to indicate…

This article argues with a literature review that a simplistic distinction between strong and weak evidence hinged on the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the federal "gold standard" for generating rigorous evidence on social programs and policies, is not tenable with evaluative studies of complex, field interventions such as…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) sent a research team to the University of Dayton (UD) on November 5-7, 2008, to conduct interviews with individuals who played significant roles in the university's teacher preparation program (see Appendix A). These interviews, along with additional materials provided by UD and identified by the AED…

The federal government has had a long-standing commitment to ensuring access of English Learner (EL) students to a meaningful education. As early as 1968, the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" ("ESEA") contained provisions for supporting the education of EL students and in its 1974 landmark decision, "Lau v.…

This document is intended to assist State Education Agency (SEA) and Lead Agency (LA) staff and technical assistance providers in designing a meaningful evaluation for the State Performance Plan (SPP)/Annual Performance Report (APR) improvement activities. It provides: (1) information about the relevance of evaluation in the context of improvement…

Over the past 20 years, home visitation has emerged as the flagship program through which many states and communities are reaching out to new parents.The presence of bills to advance home visitation in Congress and in state and local legislatures, and the fact that several states and counties are moving forward with comprehensive plans and…

The third-year evaluation of the federally funded Washington, D.C. voucher program shows that low-income students offered vouchers in the first two years of the program had modestly higher reading scores after three years but showed no significant difference in mathematics. Students were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, and the…

Northern Arizona University (NAU) is a public university nestled below the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona. It enrolls more than 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students at its main campus in Flagstaff, through its 35 statewide sites, and via online program offerings. Within the university organizational system, Student Affairs has a…

Founded in 1855 as the Farmer's High School, the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) began as a small college in Centre County providing agricultural education to young men from regional farm families. Penn State became a land-grant university in 1863 following passage of the Morrill Act. Today, Penn State enrolls more than 83,000 students…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…