Program Accountability

This study presents a reanalysis of a large randomized controlled trial of school-based mentoring and examines the estimated effect of mentoring as a function of mentee-reported relationship quality using a novel statistical approach.

The goal of this paper is to provide policymakers with recommendations for the design and implementation of strong principal development and evaluation systems. States and local school systems that pursue these ideas can use principal evaluation to drive a powerful vision of principal effectiveness and, by consequence, improve outcomes for all students.

Overview New Leaders has recently published a new principal evaluation model. It includes seven modules: (1) Overview of the New Leaders Principal Evaluation Model, (2) The Principal Evaluation Rubric, (3) Setting a Principal Practice Goal + Strategic Planning, (4) Identifying Evidence, (5) Direct Observation of Principal Practice, (6) Collecting and Mapping Evidence to the Principal Practice Rubric, and (7) Providing Actionable Feedback.

Overview New Leaders has recently published a new principal evaluation model. It includes seven modules: (1) Overview of the New Leaders Principal Evaluation Model, (2) The Principal Evaluation Rubric, (3) Setting a Principal Practice Goal + Strategic Planning, (4) Identifying Evidence, (5) Direct Observation of Principal Practice, (6) Collecting and Mapping Evidence to the Principal Practice Rubric, and (7) Providing Actionable Feedback.

This paper examines a number of promising principal preparation programs to identify lessons for improving the impact of principals on student perrmance.

This study examined a highly successful, well‐documented, national program to prevent teenage pregnancy and school failure—the Teen Outreach program—to address a fundamental question: How well can a developmentally focused, broadly targeted prevention program address the needs of those students within the program who are at the highest risk of problematic behavior. 

A 10-year comparison of graduates from 4- and 5-year teacher education programs at the same institution revealed significant differences between graduates of the two programs. Limitations of the study and alternative explanations for these differences are discussed.

This study evaluated institutional sustainability of the Early Risers “Skills for Success” conduct problems prevention program.

This study used within-program comparison of follow-up survey responses from two sets of program graduates from a university-based leadership preparation program to determine differences in program features and outcome measures.

The CJAA funded the nation’s first statewide experiment concerning research-based programs for juvenile justice. The question here was whether they work when applied statewide in a “real world” setting. This report indicates that the answer to this question is yes— when the programs are competently delivered. 

This research evaluated the outcomes of a school psychology training practicum by replicating intervention-based service delivery procedures established in prior research. 

Over the past 10 years, the Southern Regional Education Board has helped states and public universities across the region evaluate their state policies for preparing school principals who are leaders of instruction. This benchmark report reviews the past decade and looks at 10 learning-centered leadership indicators to gauge how far states have come and how far they need to go in selecting, preparing and supporting leaders of change.

This chapter will address the issues for research utilization that have been described in the literature and speak to their application to the field of drug abuse service delivery. I

The authors conducted functional analyses of aberrant behavior with 4 children with developmental disabilities, then implemented functional communication training (FCT) by using different mands across two contexts. 

This article describes an evaluation of a prisoner-run delinquency prevention program at Hawaii's major prison.

This study examined principal preparation programs within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education to ascertain whether their programs were structured in a way that would equip principal candidates with the leadership roles deemed essential for 21st century school leadership.

This paper describes a survey of teachers trained in Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement (TESA). The study examined whether teachers: agreed that TESA interactions were useful with today's children; continued to practice the TESA coding and observation process after being trained; and would recommend TESA to colleagues. 

This manuscript reports on two district’s efforts to improve the instructional leadership of principals, and lead teacher coaches in collaboration with an external support provider.

This report consists of two parts: a survey of 67 public school systems district staff serving as principal supervisors and on-site analysis of six districts pre-service training and support systems for new principals.

This study examines the NCLB accountability systems and the basic AYP rules for 28 states as they operate in practice

The authors examined the extent to which program integrity (i.e., the degree to which programs were implemented as planned) was verified and promoted in evaluations of primary and early secondary prevention programs published between 1980 and 1994. 

This report recommends an accountability approach that focuses on meaningful learning, enabled by professionally skilled and committed educators, and supported by adequate and appropriate resources, so that all students regardless of background are prepared for both college and career when they graduate from high school.

This book provides insight into the streams that are driving leadership theory and practice today. The Nature of Leadership, Second Edition provides students with an updated and complete yet concise handbook that solidifies and integrates the vast and disparate leadership literature.

This study describe the schools, students, and programs in the for-profit higher education sector, it's phenomenal recent growth, and it's relationship to the federal and state governments. The study find that for-profit institutions educate a larger fraction of minority, disadvantaged, and older students, and they have greater success at reatining students in their first year and fetting them to complete short programs at the certificate and AA levels. But they also find that the for-profit students end-up with higher unemployment and "idleness" rates and lower earning six years after entering programs than do comparable students from other schools. and they have far greater student debt burdens and default rates on their student loans.

The purpose of this study was to determine principals' perceptions of how effective mentoring programs and university-based principal preparation programs are in developing the skills necessary to carry out the 13 critical success factors identified by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). A review of the literature addressed what it means to be an effective principal and what an effective mentoring program should look like.

This article reviews implementation issues in prevention trials and specifically highlights the study of implementation in the 34 programs determined to be effective in a recent review conducted by the Prevention Research Center for the Center for Mental Health Services.

The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ) review examines teacher preparation program progress in adopting the necessary components of evidence-based reading instruction. The report continues the effort of two previous reports offering educators a look at trends on preparation program progress on providing this essential training.

The first purpose of this review is to assess the impact of implementation on program outcomes, and the second purpose is to identify factors affecting the implementation process.

a brief overview of findings from the Blueprints for Violence Prevention-Replication Initiative is presented, identifying factors that enhance or impede a successful implementation of these programs.

This chapter reviews the theory of school-based accountability, describes variations across programs and identifies key features influencing the effectiveness and possible unintended consequences of accountability policies. 

Part One provides the reader with information essential to understanding not only the content of the section that follow but also the wealth of material that exists in the literature on  program evaluation. Part Two introduces you to different approaches to evaluation to enlarge your understanding of the diversity of choices that evaluators and stakeholders make in undertaking evaluation.

This paper discusses common elements of successfully sustaining effective practices across a variety of disciplines.

This is a comprehensive literature review of the topic of Implementation examining all stages beginning with adoption and ending with sustainability.

This article presents the Fidelity of Implementation Rating System (FIMP), an observation-based measure assessing competent adherence to the Oregon model of Parent Management Training (PMTO). 

In this report, the Southern Regional Education Board evaluates some 60 internship programs within its states and finds them lacking in a number of ways, including failing to provide real experiences in leadership. It urges policymakers, universities and school districts to create apprenticeships that better prepare aspiring principals for the demands they will face.

This report of 22 universities principal preparation programs identifies weaknesses in the training and offers recommendations for states to address the problems.

This commentary offers such a framework and then they consider how the articles constituting this special issue address the various questions posed in the framework. 

This study examines the influence of administrator credential programs, on-the-job experiences, and the standards in the development of urban public school principals.

The authors have been evaluating the impact of five principal preparation programs in the United States on student outcomes. This information should be considered as one aspect of preparation program improvement and accountability. The study team lays out its recommendations in this policy paper. 

The Every Student Succeeds Act creates opportunities for policymakers to re-imagine accountability in schools—and not only by incorporating additional measures of student success into outcome-based accountability regimes.

This report describes how Denver Public Schools hired personnel to coach and evaluate its principals.

This study present results of a comprehensive review of principal leadership assessment practices in the United States. Using the learning-centered leadership framework, it focused on identifying the congruence (or lack thereof) between documented assessment practices and the research-based criteria for effective leadership that are associated with improved school performance.

With support from The Wallace Foundation, a Vanderbilt University team is developing a tool to monitor and assess the performance of school leaders. The Vanderbilt assessment will differ from existing tools by focusing 100 percent on instructional leadership and examining both principals and leadership teams. The paper, with two companion reports, presents the research behind and conceptual framework for the tool.

This study draws on data combining survey responses from principals, assistant principals, teachers and parents with administrative data to identify which principal skills matter most for school outcomes.

This article examine the concept of behavioral contingency and describes NCLB as a set of contingencies to promote the use of effective educational practices. Then they describe their design of an alternate assessment, including the components designed to capitalize on the contingencies of NCLB to promote positive educational outcomes. 

This study draws on a range of existing quantitative data resources, including Chicago Public Schools' personnel and test score data, and a biannual survey of teachers and principals to

To determine the adequacy of evaluations of family preservation services (FPS), which are designed to support families and prevent out-of-home placements of children at risk of abuse or neglect, and to assess the effectiveness of FPS at reducing out-of-home placements of children

The Percentage of Proficient Students (PPS) has become a ubiquitous statistic under the No Child Left Behind Act. The author demonstrates that the PPS metric offers only limited and unrepresentative depictions of large-scale test score trends, gaps, and gap trends.  The author shows how the statistical shortcomings of these depictions extend to shortcomings of policy, from exclusively encouraging score gains near the proficiency cut score to shortsighted comparisons of state and national testing results. The author proposes alternatives for large-scale score reporting and argues that a distribution-wide perspective on results is required for any serious analysis of test score data, including “growth”-related results under the recent Growth Model Pilot Program.

This report is a comprehensive and research-based framework outlining the conditions necessary for transformational school leaders to succeed. It offers a framework of conditions that can help districts enable great school leadership.

Improving the use of evidence in teacher preparation is one of the greatest challenges and
opportunities for our field. The chapters in this volume explore how data availability, quality,
and use within and across preparation programs shed light on the structures, policies, and
practices associated with high-quality teacher preparation.

The authors highlight an under-appreciated weakness of that approach-he imprecision of school-level test score means -- and propose a method for a better discerning signal from noise in annual school report cards. 

This report examines the issue of school principal candidate standards as evidenced by below-average verbal, quantitative, and analytic scores, as measured by standardized tests.

This report is designed to help principal preparation programs assess the quality of the training they offer.

In 1990, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania implemented a statewide instructional support team (IST) process to provide prereferral assessment and intervention for at-risk students in 500 school districts. The current study examined the academic performance of students affected by this process as contrasted with other at-risk students who did not have access to it.

New Leaders has recently published a new principal evaluation model. It includes seven modules: (1) Overview of the New Leaders Principal Evaluation Model, (2) The Principal Evaluation Rubric, (3) Setting a Principal Practice Goal + Strategic Planning, (4) Identifying Evidence, (5) Direct Observation of Principal Practice, (6) Collecting and Mapping Evidence to the Principal Practice Rubric, and (7) Providing Actionable Feedback.

The Teacher Education Committee at Northwestern Oklahoma State University approved the development of a competency-based teacher education program. A subcommittee identified and wrote professional education competencies which students should master prior to program completion.

This paper provides the history and summarizes the development of the Campbell Collaboration. The Campbell Collaboration is a “nonprofit organization with the mission of helping people make well-informed decisions about the effects of interventions in the social, behavioral, and educational domains. The paper looks at the organization’s efforts to build a world library of accurate, synthesized evidence to inform policy and practice and improve human well-being worldwide. The Education section of the Campbell research library produces reviews on issues in early childhood, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. Topics range from academic programs, teacher qualifications, testing, to a wide variety of school-based interventions. Campbell systematic reviews and related evidence synthesis provide unbiased summaries of bodies of empirical evidence. 

Fidelity of treatment in outcome research refers to confirmation that the manipulation of the independent variable occurred as planned. Verification of fidelity is needed to ensure that fair, powerful, and valid comparisons of replicable treatments can be made.

Current expenditures for education can be expressed in terms of the percentage of funds going toward salaries, employee benefits, purchased services, tuition, supplies, or other expenditures.

Over the past twenty years many reading interventions have been proposed. One of these, “Book Flooding”, proposes that providing an enriched environment in which books are present and readily available can improve reading. Much of the research on this topic has focused on exposing children in the early grades to storybooks. Given the greater importance on reading complex text in meeting new reading standards, this study examines the impact of book flooding of books that stress academic words and technical terms. This quasi-experimental study examines the influence of a book distribution program targeted at enhancing children’s exposure to information books. The research examined whether a flood of information books in early childhood settings could affect growth in language, content-related vocabulary, and concepts of comprehending information text. The study concludes there were no significant effects on student outcomes and that book distribution programs on their own need to be reevaluated if they are to improved student reading performance.

This literature review highlights central elements of the residency component of school leader preparation programs by aggregating the results of studies conducted on existing principal preparation programs. 

This report provides an overview of NYCLA’s flagship principal preparation program. Intended to help others involved in principal preparation think through important elements of principal preparation, including candidate selection, developing experiential learning opportunities, and funding, staffing and sustaining the program, the guide shares NYCLA’s successes and lessons learned during the 11 years we have delivered the Aspiring Principals Program in New York City, as well as through our work with various state and district partners nationally to adapt the program.

This paper enters debate about how U.S. schools might address long-standing disparities in educational and economic opportunities while improving the educational outcomes for all students. with a vision and an argument for realizing that vision, based on lessons learned from 60 years of education research and reform efforts. The central points covered draw on a much more extensive treatment of these issues published in 2015. The aim is to spark fruitful discussion among educators, policymakers, and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify common roles played by principals, how these roles differ across types of schools, and finally, how effectively are preparation programs training principals in these roles.

The first step in solving a problem is seeing it clearly. This article, part one of an ongoing series, defines the broad scope and depth of the literacy crisis in the United States, among both children and adults.

This paper describes Auburn University's story of developing an innovative field-based master's level principal preparation program. The program’s goal was to align the program's curriculum and internship experiences with state and other accrediting agency standards, current leadership preparation research, and local educational agency (LEA) partner input and support. 0

This book presents information and tools necessary to successfully evaluate all types of educational leaders and improve both individual and organizational performance.

In this report, the Southern Regional Education Board outlines critical actions that states, districts, universities and principals themselves should take as part of a systematic plan to address principal succession. The report makes the case for principal succession planning and describes six steps for succession planning that states and districts can implement to ensure they have the right principals for the job.

A critical review of reading programs requires objective and in-depth analysis. For these reasons, the authors offer the following recommendations and procedures for analyzing critical elements of programs.

A recent large-scale evaluation of Reading Recovery, a supplemental reading program for young struggling readers, supports previous research that found it to be effective.  In a 4 year, federally funded project, almost 3,500 students in 685 schools found that generally students benefitted from the intervention. Students receiving Reading Recovery receive supplemental services in a 1:1 instructional setting for 30 minutes 5 days a week from an instructor trained in Reading Recovery.  In the study reported here, students who received Reading Recovery had effect sizes of .35-.37 relative to a control group across a number of measures of reading.  These represent moderate effect sizes and account for about a 1.5 month increase in skill relative to the control group.  Even though the research supports the efficacy of the intervention, it also raises questions about its efficiency.  The schools that participated in the study served about 5 students and the estimated cost per student has ranged from $2,000-$5,000.  These data raise questions about the wisdom of spending this much money per student for growth of about a month and a half.

This article reviews research on the achievement outcomes of three types of approaches to
improving elementary mathematics: mathematics curricula, computer-assisted instruction
(CAI), and instructional process programs.

Since 1980, 12 peer-reviewed outcome studies (nine on behavior analytic programs, one on Project TEACCH, and two on Colorado Health Sciences) have focused on early intervention for children with autism. Mean 10 gains of 7-28 points were reported in studies of behavior analytic programs, and 3-9 in studies on TEACCH and Colorado. 

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which a grow your own (GYO) program equitably increased special education teacher capacity in one Southern state's rural and non-rural school districts.

Treatment fidelity reporting practices are described for journals that published general and special education intervention research with high impact factors from 2005 through 2009. The authors reviewed research articles, reported the proportion of intervention studies that described fidelity measurement, detailed the components of fidelity measurement reported, and determined whether the components of fidelity reported differed based on the research design, the type of intervention, or the number of intervention sessions.

The purpose of this study is the examination of low-cost interventions to improve the performance of disadvantaged students. The intervention was designed to improve the performance of students by providing small-group tutoring sessions. The research found that children who received tutoring progressed more in math compared to children in control schools (effect size = +0.19). 

Intended for state officials involved in the assessment and approval of university and other programs to train future school principals, this report describes five design principles for effective program evaluation.

This report represents the first systematic comparison of student outcomes in schools led by the Aspiring Principals Program (APP) graduates after three years to those in comparable schools led by other new principals.

We are at the beginning of the transformation of education into an evidence-based field. By evidence-based, I mean an endeavor in which decision makers routinely seek out the best available research and data before adopting programs or practices that will affect significant numbers of students.

This study compares the effect size and return on investment for rapid assessment, between, increased spending, voucher programs, charter schools, and increased accountability.

This policy brief surveys historical and contemporary trends in teacher preparation, and explores what is known about the quality of five of the most prominent independent teacher education programs in the U.S., including their impact on teacher quality and student learning. The author's analysis demonstrates that claims regarding the success of such programs are not substantiated by peer-reviewed research and program evaluations.