In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 schools are under immense pressure to meet the diverse needs of students. But policies and practices have not evolved quickly enough to meet those needs -- and as a result, the system continues to fail far too many young people. In "Levers of Change: How State Policies Support District…

This conceptual paper outlines the implications associated with increasing external evaluation within school counseling programs. The authors propose that enhancing external evaluation may help to both strengthen school counseling programs and enhance their legitimacy within increasingly competitive and academically focused school systems. More…

Many state departments of education have revised their state school counseling models to reflect the ASCA National Model for school counseling programs. Only a few states have developed statewide evaluation systems to gather information about program effectiveness and/or to promote effective local program evaluation. This qualitative study…

In contrast to typical National Science Foundation program evaluations, the Utah State Math Science Partnership-Research, Evaluation and Technical Assistance Project (MSP-RETA) provided technical assistance (TA) in two forms: direct TA for up to 10 projects a year, and professional development sessions for a larger number of project staff. Not…

Career and technical education (CTE) is increasingly seen as a major potential contributor to the recovery of the U.S. economy. However, the effectiveness and impact of the current Carl D. Perkins Act (otherwise known as Perkins IV) that governs CTE are unclear. Is the federal investment in CTE paying off? To answer this, we need to establish the…

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…

In October 2010, WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) won an i3 "Validation" grant to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) model in three core secondary content area classes: U.S. history, biology, and English language arts. SLI's proposal stated two goals. Goal 1: To transform academic literacy teaching and…

The Utah State Board of Education has adopted a policy of requiring the formal approval of the teacher education programs of the various preparing institutions in Utah at least once in each five year period. Therefore, this manual has been prepared to assist administrators and faculty at teacher education institutions in the process of preparing…

This third party evaluation report of the Alpine Career Orientation Project presents the results of tests designed to measure seventh, eighth, and ninth grade student learning outcomes and the results of an analysis of a random sampling of portfolios kept by students during the course of the project. The portfolios consisted of student records of…

This report summary focuses on third-party evaluations of career ladder/incentive pay programs in four states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, and Utah. The summary addresses programs that contain the concepts included in performance-based ladders, job-enlargement ladders, and professional-development ladders. The first section presents…

The document evaluates the impact of four special fine arts programs in Utah elementary schools, including presentations by the Utah Symphony, Ballet West, the Utah Opera Company, and the Hansen Planetarium. It is divided into two parts. Part I provides an introduction, brief descriptions of the method of the evaluation and basic statistical…

The Guidelines for Educational Program Auditors in Utah were prepared to help educational program auditors (EPAs) deliver high quality services with a minimum of effort; they were intended to serve as a text for EPA training sessions, as a handbook and policy guide for EPAs and their assistants, and as a standard for judging the quality of EPA…

The activities and results of a comprehensive three-year evaluation of Utah's Title IV-C programs are summarized. They demonstrated that evaluation can produce valuable outcomes in addition to complying with federal requirements. State officials gained insights into program improvement; local officials gained expertise in program operation and…

Fourteen appendices are gathered in this companion volume to a report summarizing the second year of a 3-year evaluation project focusing on three Utah programs funded under Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The appendices all relate to one of the three programs, Title IV-Part C (IV-C), which allocates funds for the adoption…

A study examined the feasibility of using a "nonexperimental" technique to evaluate Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) programs for economically disadvantaged adults. New statistical techniques were applied to data about a sample of Utah JTPA participants and data about Employment Security registrants linked with their individual…