This document presents a collection of materials on school performance in Maryland, especially as demonstrated in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) and the Independence Mastery Assessment Program (IMAP) for some special needs students. The MSPAP is a testing program administered to third, fifth, and eighth grade students…

This paper presents a primer on building a scientifically oriented teacher evaluation instrument. It stresses the importance of accurate measures and accepts the presupposition that scientific approaches provide the most accurate measures of student teacher performance. The paper discusses the scientific concepts of validity and reliability, and…

Self-understanding is critical to effective teaching and leadership. This article reviews the importance of self-knowledge as a cornerstone in education programs, then describes a process for developing self-understanding and some of the assessment instruments used in these programs. Finally, the paper summarizes the data provided by 281 students…

A variety of methods are examined that teachers from preschool to graduate school levels can use in assessing their students; the common principles underlying classroom assessment are explored. The first principle is that the primary purpose of classroom assessment is to inform teaching and improve learning. A second principle is that multiple…

Assessing School-Age Child Care Quality (ASQ) is a five-step process which guides program staff as they evaluate the quality of their program so they can develop priorities and improve achievement of goals. The five steps in the ASQ process are: (1) preparing for program improvement; (2) gathering information; (3) building the Action Plan; (4)…

A reaccreditation self-study project was conducted at St. Jerome Catholic School in Ft. Lauderdale (Florida). The school's 325 students come from a predominantly blue collar, ethnically and racially diverse community. The curriculum provides a solid academic background of core subjects, special subjects, and extracurricular activities. The project…

Preparing language interventionists and special education teachers to work with colleagues and families on collaborative teams in public school settings, this book provides basic procedures for intervention for all children with language and communication difficulties, with hands-on activities to give students practice in applying the procedures.…

This British Library Research and Development Department study assesses current activities and attitudes toward quality management in library and information services (LIS) in the academic sector as well as the commercial/industrial sector. Definitions and types of benchmarking are described, and the relevance of benchmarking to LIS is evaluated.…

The Florida Association of Voluntary Agencies for Caribbean Action (FAVA/CA) was formed to provide on-site, overseas technical assistance and training in health, agriculture, social services, and education. This paper reports on the beginnings of an evaluation of the New Life Organization (NEWLO), a vocational training institute in Grenada, West…

Issues related to assessing school-to-work transitions in the United States were discussed in the context of selected findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a longitudinal data set characterizing 9,964 of 12,686 of young people who were 14-22 years old when first interviewed in 1979. The first section of the paper…

In spring 1994, the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) Board of Directors approved a recommendation that the Association take the lead in establishing standards for environmental education. The four working papers contained in this publication are the first step in the NAAEE Standards Project. The papers discuss the…

Recruiting schools and kids to participate in drug prevention evaluations is no longer, if it ever was, a "done deal." Since the mid-1980s, schools have been inundated with requirements for drug programs and requests to cooperate with program evaluations. As a consequence, both treatment and control schools are harder to find. In addition, many…

This report on Phase IV, of a four-phase study, provided for the development of evaluation templates and instruments to be used by the California Department of Education to facilitate systematic assessment of state funded educational technology programs and projects. These assessment documents comprised the major data collection sources for the…

The concept of "opportunity to learn" (OTL) strategies was first introduced several decades ago and was defined by a narrow set of instructional components. Since then, many additional criteria have been incorporated into the OTL concept, some specifically to ensure an equal education for disadvantaged and minority students. The original…

Recent studies of the effectiveness of the following types of job training programs were reviewed: mainstream job training (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act and Job Training Partnership Act programs); welfare-to-work; experimental; job training for specific population groups; and specific services. Special attention was paid to the…