This guide was created to help district leaders understand the benefits and drawbacks of the four-day school week, assess their district's readiness to make the switch, and evaluate the results of implementing the new schedule. This guide begins with an overview of common goals and outcomes for the four-day school week. It then provides a set of…

The Striving Readers program aimed to raise the literacy levels of middle and high school students reading below grade level and to build a strong research base on effective adolescent literacy interventions. This report summarizes the results of a systematic review of evaluations of the ten different interventions funded by the Striving Readers…

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is working to respond to increased interest in the use of growth models for school accountability. Growth models are based on tracking change in individual student achievement scores over multiple years. While growth models have been used for decades in academic research and program evaluation, a…

Considerable research has been conducted on the use of the findings of program evaluation, but little, if any, attention has been paid to the soundness of the methods of this research. If the methods are not sound or not well described in the research, the strength of the conclusions of the research is unknown. The authors examine the empirical…

Oregon State University (OSU) is located in Corvallis, a community of 53,000 people situated in the heart of the Willamette Valley between Portland and Eugene. Approximately 15,700 undergraduate and 3,400 graduate students, including 2,600 U.S. students of color and 950 international students, are currently enrolled at OSU across 11 academic…

This session will describe the social validity, usability and intent to use of an interactive, state-of-the-art, professional development program based on the Response to Intervention (RtI) approach and its core components (e.g., problem-solving strategy; three tiers of intervention service delivery with universal, selected and intensive…

Developing evaluation capacity in organizations is a complex and multifaceted task. This article outlines a framework for building evaluation capacity. The framework is based on four strategic methods for teaching evaluation: (a) using logic models for sound program planning, (b) providing one-on-one help, (c) facilitating small-team collaborative…

The purpose of the research was to explore an alternative implementation strategy for Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I evaluation Model A; that is, the use of Rasch calibrated item banks rather than traditional norm-referenced tests. A methodology for obtaining normative information for such banks involved equating a normed test with…

The chronology, evaluation procedures, results, implications, and recommendations of a district-wide evaluation of reading instruction are described. The evaluation was conducted in 3l elementary schools in Eugene, Oregon, to determine: reading program effectiveness, qualities of effective programs, and methods to improve ineffective programs. (MH)

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) sent a research team to Western Oregon University (WOU) on November 17-18, 2008, to conduct interviews with individuals who play important roles in the university's teacher preparation program. These interviews, along with additional materials provided by WOU and identified by the AED research team,…

Rigorous research provides information that will allow other schools and districts to select interventions that have a scientifically based track record of effectiveness. All Striving Reader grants include the mandate to evaluate literacy intervention(s) targeted to adolescents who are reading significantly below grade level. Although all studies…

This paper presents a profile of Oregon's Child Care Quality Indicators Program prepared as part of the Child Care Quality Rating System (QRS) Assessment Study. The profile consists of several sections and their corresponding descriptions including: (1) Program Information; (2) Rating Details; (3) Quality Indicators for Center-Based Programs; (4)…

This handbook presents a secondary program evaluation system to improve the quality of Oregon state-approved, secondary vocational education programs. Section 1 describes this evaluation system. It discusses the three levels of evaluation. The design includes provisions for review of Oregon minimum standards, federal and state vocational education…

The Evaluation of Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) systems was designed to provide the U.S. Department of Labor information on how states are designing, implementing, and operating their worker profiling and reemployment services systems for dislocated workers and to compare the effectiveness of different state approaches to…