The Chapter 1 supplementary education program is popular with Congress, benefiting from increased appropriations since 1988. The 1988 amendments of the Hawkins Stafford Act improved the program, but further changes may have to take place at the 1993 reauthorization to make Chapter 1 relevant to accelerating educational reform. (SLD)

A survey of 834 teacher educators regarding ideal and actual practicability of each of the 18 new National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards. Subjects considered the standards workable guidelines for quality teacher preparation, ranked four of five NCATE categories as equally important, and recognized the need for…

The case for an in-depth evaluation of many federal education programs is argued, particularly those providing site-specific information capable of informing program improvement. The reauthorization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) offers an opportunity for the U.S. Department of Education to play a leadership role in…

To meet the educational needs of residents and visitors at a nature reserve in Belize, educators developed a program to teach participating students and provide ongoing educational resources for future visitors. Fifteen North-American college students received academic training in rainforest ecology and environmental education. They then created…

Revision of the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Alberta (Canada) and results of an initial formative evaluation of one program component--students' first school placement--are described. Program revisions based on continual student and teacher feedback obtained from ongoing formative evaluation enabled positive program…

This article presents a perspective on the relationship between adult education and human resource development of the past two decades and the subsequent emergence of workforce development. The lesson taken from the article should be more than simply a recounting of events related to these fields of study. Instead, the more general lesson may be…

This chapter describes how an action research framework facilitates using evaluation and assessment results to improve programs and demonstrate institutional effectiveness. (Contains 1 table.)

Program accountability is increasingly important in teacher education. Yet, program accountability often implies reporting quantitative data in an easy-to-understand visual format. Such data can lack validity when numbers are small and they may confuse issues of candidate performance with candidate understanding. In this study, four teacher…

As part of its ongoing process of formative evaluation, the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) conducted a survey of four cohorts of recent graduates. The data from this survey are being used in concert with findings from other lines of inquiry to assess and improve the program. The discussion in this paper is centered on several research…

Despite reporting greater needs for career planning information, African American students are often less likely to use the services available to them. Understanding the factors influencing the career development of African American students is therefore critical if these students are to succeed both academically and in the world of work. This…

A variety of handheld applications and curricular materials have been developed to support inquiry science learning in recent years, but there are few handheld-supported assessment activities available to teachers. In Project WHIRL, researchers from SRI International worked in partnership with teachers from Beaufort County School District (SC) to…

Learning communities continue to be at the heart of teaching and learning today. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent of the impact of the Freshman Academy/Learning Community program on student progress at a historically Black university. The authors also looked at the extent to which students engaged in their learning as a result of…

This study reports on a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) in a Swedish municipality. The implementation was founded on two principles: (1) teaching should be informed by educational research; (2) to be successful teachers' professional development needs to be based in everyday classroom practice. From these principles,…

Several factors contribute to a disproportionately lower Latino participation in college education. Foremost among those factors are policies that encourage quick job placement over career development, lack of understanding of the benefits of a college degree, lower expectations for Latino students, poor financial planning, and lack of guidance. A…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the formative evaluation results from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Healthy School Communities (HSC) pilot project. Design/methodology/approach: This study utilized 11 HSC pilot sites in the USA (eight sites) and Canada (three sites). The evaluation question was…