Education researchers working in sub-Saharan Africa have recently and rapidly expanded the availability of evidence related to the impact of educational interventions on learning outcomes, particularly in preprimary and lower primary education (Ganimian & Murnane, 2016; McEwan, 2015; Popova, Evans, & Arancibia, 2016). Awareness that…

This investigation examines two contrasting evaluations of early childhood education: the Westinghouse-Ohio University study and the Ypsilanti Perry Preschool Project. The Westinghouse study concluded that Head Start experience had very little, if any, academic value for participating children, whereas the Perry Preschool Project concluded that…

There has been an increasing emphasis in educational policies, practices and professional development on the capacity of educational leadership to exert a causal impact on student cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. If the strict criteria of counterfactual causality are adhered to no causal inference could be made about the effects of…

The concept of quality is analyzed with special attention to its different senses in two contexts: qualitative evaluation and assessment of educational program quality. The view that evaluation of program quality cannot be validly expressed in quantitative terms and that qualitative evaluation methodologies have special relevance for the…

Along with cost, and hence availability of hardware and quality educational courseware, the major barrier to full implementation of microcomputers is the lack of knowledge possessed by researchers and educational practitioners alike regarding the nature of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes a teacher must have to successfully use microcomputers…

Researchers review the theoretical and empirical literature to investigate how models of organizational effectiveness can be applied to the study of school effectiveness in public elementary and secondary education. The authors consider nine models grouped into two sets: goal-centered models and systems-oriented models. The goal-centered group…

Issues pertaining to the documentation of positive outcomes for severely handicapped learners as a function of their educational programs are addressed, and the value of the general evaluative concept of educational validity is emphasized. Issues related to the current overreliance on the single-subject experimental model are also discussed. (SEW)

The shortcomings of the three main approaches to measuring teacher effectiveness (systematic observation, participant observation, and questionnaires) are discussed and problems of research design and analysis considered. The development of better measures of educational benefits to complement the emphasis on test scores is suggested. (Author/SK)

Recent research examines school effectiveness and the way variations in school characteristics and structures affect achievement. Such research is limited because it is atheoretical and the findings are not uniform. Future research must study a wider range of student performance and identify how classroom and school processes combine to create an…

Four evaluation studies concerning the relationship between parent behaviors/attitudes and child achievement are presented. In each study, parental data were obtained either by direct observation or lengthy face-to-face interviews. In all four studies, significant relationships were found between parental measures and child achievement. (Author/LC)

The major finding of the Law-Related Education Evaluation Project report for Year 1 (1981), that law-related education courses can reduce juvenile delinquency, is of limited use to educational decision makers and could be misleading. The research design leaves much to be desired; however, that fact must be considered in light of the difficulty of…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) invited researchers, practitioners, and users to provide recommendations that would assist NCES in the redesign of its elementary and secondary education data program. This is a draft of the first of two volumes synthesizing the papers received by July 31, 1985. In Part I, Emerson J. Elliot,…

This paper examines leadership preparation by focusing on existing research and unaddressed questions about what happens inside and outside cohorts, a model for program delivery used in many universities. It seeks to stimulate dialogue on the impact of cohort participation on learning outcomes, professional roles, and practice. The objectives are…

Student tracking systems are enabling increasing numbers of community colleges to respond to external demands for accountability with tangible measurements of student progress and institutional outcomes. Several recent trends in marketing, accountability, communications with students, and internal competition for resources have prompted interest…

Today's outcomes assessment movement places great expectations on a college's ability to generate longitudinal data on student flow and achievement. Though computers and data managers will play an important role in meeting these expectations, outcomes assessment is not just a data collection task. Its success depends on how clearly the goals of…