Objective: To examine associations between television viewing, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, eating out, physical activity, and body weight change over 1 year. Design: Secondary data analysis from randomized intervention trial. Setting: Households in the community. Participants: Adults (n = 153) and adolescents (n = 72) from the same…

This article is intended as a contribution to the debate on the role of human capital in determining value for money in early years education. The article explores how the idea that early years education offers value for money has become folklore amongst policymakers and more widely. However, drawing on both interview data and existing literature…

This article chronicles the search for and development of an outcome measurement tool for teen parents receiving community-based wraparound services. The criteria for selecting functional assessment tools available in the literature is presented along with the barriers experienced in using two of these well-cited tools. The rationale for in-house…

Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a new self-report questionnaire designed to assess college students' intentions to employ 31 specific alcohol-reduction strategies. Method: Students attending a large public university were recruited to complete alcohol-reduction, drinking history, and personality questionnaires online.…

Responding to federal policy and recent research, states and districts have developed and begun implementing multiple-measure teacher evaluation systems. These systems generally include observational and/or student survey measures of instructional quality alongside measures of teachers' contributions to student learning (e.g., value-added models…

This master data collection protocol describes the data that Mathematica collected for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge Study of Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. This study was conducted for the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The data were collected from reviews of applications, documents, and…

Recent years have seen the convergence of two major policy streams in U.S. K-12 education: standards/accountability and teacher quality reforms. Work in these areas has led to the creation of multiple measures of teacher quality, including measures of their instructional alignment to standards/assessments, observational and student survey measures…

Social work faculty experience increasing demands to develop and maintain a research portfolio that includes external funding and publications. Given the increase in research expectations, more part-time instructors are needed to teach courses. In addition to the literature review, we briefly describe a pilot part-time faculty mentorship project…

Understanding effective and appropriate techniques for assessing student learning has never been as critical and political as is it is today. Accurate assessment methodologies employed in public schools are vital to the interpretation of student achievement data through which school effectiveness is being measured. Although there is a need,…

This paper is a case study. It tells the story of the process that the Council on Accreditation for Parks, Recreation, Tourism and Related Professions beta test site created its learning outcomes assessment program. A planning process was used that has evolved from quality management philosophy and practice: DMADV. Use of DMADV required precise…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of coordinated in-classroom education and taste-testing activities on fruit and vegetable acceptance in a state-wide sample of third through sixth grade children. Methods: Two taste-testing sessions were a part of six nutrition lessons that were implemented in nine elementary…

In an effort to improve developmental education students' outcomes, community colleges have been experimenting with acceleration strategies. Models of acceleration allow students to complete their developmental requirements in a shorter amount of time. However, there has been limited empirical research on the effects of accelerating students'…

In this study, we examined how the relationships between one observation protocol, the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO), and value-added measures shift when different tests are used to assess student achievement. Using data from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, we found that PLATO was more strongly related to the…

Critical thinking is an important outcome of a college education. Assessment techniques that require students to demonstrate their understanding of course concepts are referred to as authentic assessment and promote the development of critical thinking. Little research exists on the types of assessment and grading practices utilized by community…

General outcome measurement, a specific type of formative evaluation, can be used to assess progress toward long-term academic goals. Curriculum-based measurement is a widely used type of general outcome measurement. When used to develop local norms, curriculum-based measurement data are helpful in making individual student and systems-level…