Generally accepted methods of evaluation and measurement used by responsible educators are first discussed. These techniques are demonstrated as they apply to evaluating school health education programs. It is pointed out that effective evaluation encompasses everyone upon whom the program has an impact--students, teachers, supervisors,…

The generalizability, and therefore usefulness, of some traditional reviews of literature is questioned, and the method of meta-analysis (reducing research statistics from a number of studies to a common measure) is suggested as an alternative. Research on the relationship of self and performance measures is used to illustrate this point. (MSE)

The fourth national goal is for American students to be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement by 2000. Although the U.S. seems outclassed by other nations, an emphasis on test comparisons is misleading because of biased relative rankings of nations and discrepancies in sampling and testing methodologies. Includes 29 references.…

How much can late schooling investments close racial and ethnic skill gaps? We investigate this question by exploiting the large differences in completed schooling that arise among teenagers with birthdays near school-entry cutoff dates. We estimate that an additional year of high school raises the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) scores of…

Recommendations are presented for the state-by-state assessment of student achievement as part of the development of educational indicators to be compared across states. The State Education Assessment Center of the Council of Chief State School Officers solicited comments from the states about developing the assessment program. Issues were…

Beside interindividual social comparisons, intraindividual dimensional comparisons in which students compare their achievements in one subject with their achievements in other subjects have an impact on their academic self-concepts. The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model by Marsh (1986) assumes that dimensional comparisons lead to…

The "Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998" (commonly referred to as "Perkins," "Perkins III," or "the Act" and referred to hereafter as Perkins III) requires, in Sec. 113(c)(3)(C), that the secretary provide the appropriate committees of Congress copies of annual reports received by…

Five sister reports published by the Friedman Foundation over the past two years have ignored the relevant research literature in asserting that private-school voucher programs can reduce the social costs of dropping out while increasing graduation rates. The reports are state-specific, targeting five different states. But each report follows a…

Assessment illiterates do not understand how to produce high-quality achievement data and do not evaluate critically the data they use. Most states require no explicit training in assessment as part of teacher certification. The ultimate data consumers (students and parents) must become assessment literate enough to indicate inconsistencies and…

The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale for Program Facilitators (SPF) to assess the effectiveness of after school achievement programs through four steps: (a) identification of a theoretical framework, (b) formulation of the initial scale, (c) test of content validity, and (d) conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). A…

Do children learn more in full-day kindergartens than half-day programs? If full-day kindergarten increases learning, are kindergartners in some schools particularly advantaged by their full-day experience? We address these questions with a nationally representative sample of over 8,000 kindergartners and 500 U.S. public schools that participated…

The purpose of this study was to assess structural knowledge change across a two-week workshop designed to provide high-school teachers with training in Java and Object Oriented Programming. Both before and after the workshop, teachers assigned relatedness ratings to pairs of key concepts regarding Java and Object Oriented Programming. Their…

At the request of the Hawaii Department of Education, Achieve conducted a study of Hawaii's 2005 grade 10 State Assessment in reading and mathematics. The study compared the content, rigor and passing (meets proficiency) scores on Hawaii's assessment with those of the six states that participated in Achieve's earlier study, "Do Graduation…

The Washington State Legislature requires that a sample of public school eleventh grade students be tested at least once every 4 years in the basic skills of reading, language arts and mathematics. A statewide assessment of eleventh grade achievement was made in 1981 using the California Achievement Test Form C. This report describes the…

Five research studies dealing with spelling achievement in New Zealand schools have been conducted; these include dictated-word spelling tests, written language studies, and achievement data collections of 20,000 students. Several conclusions emerge from an examination of this research: spelling achievement studies should be based on samples of…