This document, prepared for a symposium on preschool compensatory programs, makes preliminary comments on the difficulty of program assessment and tight experimental design, on the necessity of in-depth involvement, and on the need for vigilance in maintaining an experimental condition. A number of studies in preschool intervention are reviewed…

A re-analysis of evaluation data concerning the Emergency School Aid Act shows that findings of the original evaluators are open to multiple interpretations. (JKS)

Data indicate that absolute summer achievement decline is not common. Relative decline, where low achievers do not keep pace over the summer with their peers, is common. Finally, attendance at summer school appears to have no strong ameliorative effect on achievement, either short-term or longer-term. (Author/MLF)

School districts should be allowed to dispense with labeling children as disadvantaged and to use the Title I support they receive in schools that have a high proportion of children from poor families. (Author/MLF)

The financial aspects of educational programs are discussed in this commentary on the evaluation of the Emergency School Aid Act. Budget and expenditure data must be examined closely when evaluating educational programs. (JKS)

The story of the national evaluation of the Follow Through program mirrors the difficulties in trying to evaluate a complex social program that changed its community service orientation to a strategy of planned variation of early childhood programs. (Author/MLF)

Offers a critique of the final report of the Head Start Evaluation, Synthesis, and Utilization Project. Points raised include the following: studies considered by the report are not based on a representative sample of Head Start sites; findings are based on studies of both low and high quality; and evaluations do not offer the only rationale for…

Two rebuttals to William Cooley's criticisms of Title I programs in the January 1981 issue of "Educational Leadership" claim he incorrectly interpreted the data on the effectiveness of the programs. Cooley responds. (MLF)

Planned Variation was deisgned as a three-year program to assess the implementation of prominent preschool curricula in Head Start and the immediate effects of the programs. Sites used were those in which the sponsor already had a Follow Through program; the research project lacked the necessary control over site characteristics. Consultants…

Seven studies of the positive long- and short-term effects of good preschool programs on low-income youngsters provide evidence that such programs can be effective. The studies also reveal some of the problems faced by researchers in this field. (PGD)

This document answers the question, "What has been learned about evaluation methodology from the decade of compensatory education"? Ten issues dealing with the evaluation of Title I were identified within a general theoretical framework of evaluation. For each issue it was the aim of this document to do the following: 1)to clarify the…

Abt Associates, the firm responsible for the primary analysis of the Follow Through experiment, summarize the findings. Their clearest finding indicates that local circumstances, attitudes, and activities unmeasured by evaluation have much more to do with the effectiveness of Follow Through models, without exception, than do their theoretical…

Interpretations point up the fact that research-oriented evaluation, aiming at estimation of program effects on specific test outcome measures, is capable of illuminating only part of the value of a complex social program like Follow Through. (Author/MLF)