Labeled A Nation at Risk, Americans are urgently seeking reform in their public school systems. While many promising programs are being developed, they have not yet been validated. The national conference Making Schools Work for Underachieving Minority Students shared the best of what is presently known and deliberated on the implications for research, policy, and practice. Sponsored by CRESST (Center for Research on Evaluation Standards and Student Testing), The National Urban League, and the National Council of LaRaza, the conference was financed by the U.S. Department of Education. Closely following the structure of the conference, this volume's contributors examine education's current status. They then investigate potentially promising approaches to specific problem areas. Contributors treat issues of evaluation and testing, and conclude by addressing the potential of collaborative efforts. Responding to a major challenge, community groups and organizations throughout the country are seeking answers to the problem of underachieving minority students. This volume builds on these shared interests and is a first step toward an intervention process. Topics covered include: creating effective instructional programs; reducing the dropout rate; preparing students for secondary and postsecondary success; helping limited English proficient students; and improving teacher quality. The volume's contributors hope to promote dialogue on promising practices, foster collaboration, identify critical R & D needs and collaborative arrangements, and identify testing and evaluation issues for subsequent inquiry.

Lynn Winters's and Joan Herman's The Turnaround Toolkit is written for school leaders who are focused on transforming instruction, and who may be working under significant time constraints to reverse declining student achievement or public perceptions of school failure. Based on the evidence that simply implementing "continuous improvement" is not enough to close the achievement gap, The Turnaround Toolkit provides a nine-step formative evaluation programme designed to achieve an immediate and consistent focus on improving instruction in order to bolster student achievement. In a straightforward and accessible fashion, Herman and Winters explain three overarching "Turnaround Tasks" that frame these steps and the necessary-and sometimes drastic-actions that must be taken by school leaders as they use data to strategically choose, implement, monitor, and revise school interventions. A dedicated, online "toolkit" offers numerous worksheets and templates that support each stage of the process and help school leaders scaffold the work of educators to put an aggressive turnaround plan into action while a leadership guide at the end of the book provides guidance to turnaround teams and facilitators.

Offers precise lessons on how to: * Focus the evaluation * Identify tracking strategies * Manage instrument development and data collection * Score and summarize data * Analyze information and interpret findings * Use findings and continue monitoring

The heart of the Program Evaluation Kit, this volume provides a broad overview of evaluation planning and a practical guide to designing and managing programs. Learn how the field of evaluation has changed over the last ten years. This volume is concise, informative, and clearly written. Major attention is given to: establishing an evaluation's parameters; the how-to's of formative and summative evaluation; and the power of evaluation studies that combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Also covered are recently developed evaluation standards; and a new emphasis on ongoing program monitoring in evaluation. The Evaluator's Handbook also covers: concerns, user needs, and other socio-political factors that influence the utility of an evaluation. Strategies for maximizing utility are included throughout the evaluation planning, implementation, and reporting process.