The purpose of the project was to identify common curricular needs among seven small contiguous midwestern school districts by means of parallel needs assessments conducted independently by each district. Operating under a state finance plan in which school spending is tied directly to student enrollment and faced with a decreasing number of…

This paper asks whether all the current attention being given to educational evaluation and all the activity going on indicates real progress in the output of evaluation and its use in the policy process. The paper reviews the brief history of educational evaluation and gives a qualified "yes" as an answer to the question, noting: significant…

Some States (notably New York, Pennsylvania, and Oregon) collect information which provides evidence or indicators that their school programs are doing what they are intended to do. For example, finding out how many college preparatory students are still in college and how many vocational students are gainfully employed in the vocation for which…

The Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) Higher Education Program was evaluated in order to provide valid information for decision making. Data gathered by a questionnaire administered to 2,736 students in a previous study was refined by applying the chi-square test of significant differences to certain student characteristics and variables. Each area…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was created in 1969, and its goals were twofold: to make available the first comprehensive data on the educational attainments of young Americans in 10 learning areas and to measure any growth or decline that takes place in the educational attainments of young Americans. In 7 of the 10…

A total assessment system based upon the concepts and processes dealt with in this study/action publication to help improve decision-making is presented. Three groups of people are dealt with specifically: children in the early years, (through grade three); children in the middle years, (through grade eight); and professional educators. The…

This paper reports briefly on some recent efforts to find a process for delineating people's needs as a basis for establishing criteria in designing and evaluating educational services. The paper is designed to help educational decisionmakers learn how to get useful information about needs. The authors have tentatively identified a class of…

An assessment program was developed to measure the efficiency of educational programs used in the school districts throughout Pennsylvania. The effectiveness of the school was determined by measuring its product, collective student performance. This required a design which takes into account other conditions which appear to contribute to student…

This report contains an interpretive analysis of individual test items used in the 1973 Wisconsin State Mathematics Assessment at grades 3 and 7. The sampling procedures, organization, interpretation of data, limitations, and useful definitions of the test, and test results are discussed. The analysis includes an evaluation of each test item and…

The reading assessment undertaken by the Department of Public Instruction in May 1973 was a pilot study. As such its primary purpose was to provide information for future assessment instruments, administration procedures, sampling procedures, and data analysis alternatives. Thus, this document contains a critical examination of the pilot…

This report is designed to share the experiences of Oregon's Department of Education, thus far, with both the conceptual and actual use of indicators in assessing progress toward State level goals and objectives. The first chapter outlines the history of the study and briefly discusses the concept of indicators as used in the report. The report…

Procedures for implementing the Pennsylvania Plan (see TM 000 608) are detailed, and the method of achieving representative sampling is described. Functions of school representatives involved in the data collection are listed, and their training is outlined. Procedures for collecting school and teacher information, and administering tests and…

Under a 1972 grant from the National Science Foundation's College Science Improvement Program (CoSIP), Worcester Polytechnic Institute undertook a major educational experiment involving the total reorientation of its educational programs. The encompassing effort is referred to as the WPI PLAN. Several modes of evaluation have been and continue to…

Appendixes to the final report on the Yonkers and Syracuse, New York, career education projects are contained in this volume. Third party evaluation reports (Appendix D) comprise the entire document with the exception of six pages (containing Appendixes A, B, C, E, and F which provide brief information concerning related career education programs…

This monograph is part of a study to collect "benchmark" data on the teaching of science that could serve as a basis of comparison for trend analysis. The information obtained in this survey provides a description of science teaching practices and selected teacher characteristics in the United States. The purpose of this study was to obtain…