Value-added models help to evaluate the knowledge that school districts, schools, and teachers add to student learning as students progress through school. In this article, the well-known Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) is examined. The author presents a practical investigation of the methodological issues associated with the…

The purpose of this Guide is to advise researchers, policymakers, and others on when it is possible to conduct a high-quality randomized controlled trial in education at reduced cost. Well-designed randomized controlled trials are recognized as the gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention (i.e., program or practice) in…

This authoritative volume provides state-of-the-art practices for supporting the approximately 20% of today's K-12 students who have emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) that hinder school success. Leading experts present evidence-based approaches to screening, progress monitoring, intervention, and instruction within a multi-tiered framework.…

The Parent Education Profile (PEP) is an instrument used by family literacy programs to rate parents' support for children's literacy development. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how the PEP constructs the ideal parent, the text's underlying assumptions about parenting and education, and its ideological effects. The…

Self-regulated learning (SRL) has become an important topic in education during the last three decades. At the same time, advances in technology have made it possible to create complex Technology Enhanced Learning Environments (TELEs). While there is some evidence that these TELEs have the potential to foster SRL, there is only little research on…

Despite the best of intentions, qualitative researchers can be faced, in some circumstances, with having to make meaning from thin, or less than optimal, data. Using a real study as context, the authors describe the ways that they made sense of their thin data on teachers' perceptions of a large-scale evaluation instrument. They propose a…

Empirical literature on two types of hearings, and their applicability in evaluating educational programs, is reviewed. An introduction describes the use and nature of hearings and distinguishes adversary hearings, in which two parties argue opposing sides of an issue, from committee hearings, in which a variety of positions are presented to a…

Notes that, very early in program planning, budgets are estimated for major program components, including evaluation. Proposes heuristic for establishing reasonable evaluation estimates in initial planning. Describes logical sources of information from which to construct such a heuristic. Recommends that, for typical programs and projects, initial…

Comparison of rapid automatized naming in 136 children and youth with primary language disorders and 2,450 typical children and youth found naming time (but not accuracy) differed significantly between groups, especially in the color-shape naming task. Findings indicate that the requirements for two-dimensional, continuous naming resulted in…

This study applied four direct magnitude estimation (DME) standards to the evaluation of speech from four individuals with dysarthria and three neurologically normal speakers. It found a fixed set of sentence-level utterances was scaled differently depending on the specific standard used. Results are discussed in terms of possible standardization…

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…

Numerous studies have shown increasing item reliabilities as an effect of the item position in personality scales. Traditionally, these context effects are analyzed based on item-total correlations. This approach neglects that trends in item reliabilities can be caused either by an increase in true score variance or by a decrease in error…

Because human beings are different and are necessarily subjective, and because evaluation always involves the human factor, many problems arise. The problems may be compounded in third world settings because they have been studied less, and are less understood, and because evaluators are often from outside the setting and therefore bring…

The most important distinction between evaluation (in the psychometric tradition), ethnography, and auditing is that they are guided by three distinctively separate principles. The underlying principle guiding evaluation is assessment. Ethnography is guided by description. Auditing uses description and assessment to establish an opinion on…

Argues that moral issues must be a central concern in the practice of evaluation rather than methodological issues and instrumental conceptions of knowledge. Criticizes the consequences of current liberal democratic beliefs on thinking about evaluation. (FMW)