The past few years have seen efforts in several countries and a wide range of disciplines to adopt and apply existing professional standards for guiding and judging evaluation services and/or develop new standards. Some of the efforts have drawn from the work and products of the North American Joint Committee on Standards for Educational…

In the UK, following the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) funded over 450 separate crime prevention schemes. The YJB in approving these various schemes stressed the importance of monitoring and evaluation. Local evaluators were appointed whose role was to report back to the funding agency and the national evaluators.…

This article provides a critical review of the quality of 12 recent large federal program evaluations. The review focused on elements of the evaluation design, inclusion of evaluation expertise among those who have oversight of the evaluation, and evaluation dissemination. Overall, the process analyses from these evaluations provide good models…

Evaluation has become an everyday activity for many us, whether of our practice in the classroom, the student experience, institutional performance or funded projects. This article looks at the main aspects of evaluation and adopts a systematic approach to evaluation by looking at why, what, for and by whom, when and how to evaluate. The emphasis…

This article addresses the construction of "critical friendships" within the practice of one particular program evaluation. It focuses on the evolution of relationships developed during one 2-year program evaluation study that examined a collaborative educational project. Findings show that a caring interest and mentoring rapport developed between…

Evaluation can be a complicated, time-consuming process. It is no wonder so many organizations resist doing it. In this article, the author outlines the steps in the evaluation process and presents sample questions in each step. The author also defines and exemplifies the components for a successful evaluation strategy.

Fidelity may be defined as the extent to which delivery of an intervention adheres to the protocol or program model originally developed. Fidelity measurement has increasing significance for evaluation, treatment effectiveness research, and service administration. Yet few published studies using fidelity criteria provide details on the…

Empowerment evaluation involves a program's stakeholders in designing and implementing an evaluation of their own program, thus contributing to the program's improvement and self-determination (Fetterman, 1994, 1996). It appeared to be an appropriate approach for evaluating a mental health drop-in center, which had congruent goals of collaboration…

Decision makers in nonformal education programs can maximize the utility of their evaluation investment and improve program effectiveness by being more mindful of the potential uses of evaluation information. Evaluation use is a multifaceted construct that may include, but is not limited to, the implementation of evaluation recommendations or…

To provide another perspective on evaluation within nonformal settings, "New Directions for Evaluation" recently interviewed David Smith, the coordinator of the Professional Learning to Close the Achievement Gap program for the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools, who has extensive background in education and educational research. He formerly held…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a parent education program on parents' awareness about the Independent Autistic Children Education Centre (ACEC: in Turkish OCEM). The program was offered through a distance education program. Participants of the study included parents of 72 children with autism who were receiving…

This report is the first of several to come from CASEL's major meta-analysis project. The report describes the strong positive effects after-school programs can have, and the conditions needed to realize these benefits. A meta-analysis to evaluate the magnitude of effects obtained from 73 programs was conducted. Outcomes were examined in three…

The purpose of this Guide is to provide education officials, program providers, and others seeking to sponsor a rigorous program evaluation with practical advice on finding a capable evaluator. More specifically, this Guide offers practical advice on finding an evaluator to conduct a rigorous evaluation to measure the effect of an educational…

A randomized evaluation suggests that a program which provided official textbooks to randomly selected rural Kenyan primary schools did not increase test scores for the average student. In contrast, the previous literature suggests that textbook provision has a large impact on test scores. Disaggregating the results by students' initial academic…

Integrating or infusing topics across a teacher preparation program is often seen as being desirable. This article describes an evaluation process that was used to assess the degree to which all core courses in an initial teacher preparation program integrated special education, technology, and issues of cultural diversity into a general education…