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This guide is intended to assist in the evaluation of career education programs. It has been developed around the concept that the evaluation should be viewed as a management tool for the improvement of program performance. The guide recognizes the key roles of the evaluators and program managers in the evaluation process. It is addressed principally to the program managers and their staffs to provide the background on evaluation techniques, issues, and problems needed for decision-making and program direction and for implementation of changes indicated by the evaluation studies. At the same time, it highlights techniques and procedures that evaluators will find useful in planning and implementing evaluation studies. The objective of the guide is to contribute to the improvement of career education efforts in local school districts. It strives to convey the importance and utility of program evaluation to the management of career education programs and to offer practical assistance in conducting such evaluations. This guide, in draft version, was published and disseminated for trial use. Hundreds of personnel provided feedback resulting in this final version. USOE undertook a review of instruments which attempted to measure career education student outcomes. For two summers a review panel reviewed instruments, and the results of these reviews are included in the appendix. (RC)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of a maturity model for staging the capacity of nonprofit community organizations to implement or sustain social interventions or demonstration programs. During the period 1999 to 2001, a five-stage maturity model was synthesized using knowledge and experience derived from diverse fields, and applied to small nonprofit organizations in an iterative process of (a) application, (b) analysis, (c) revision, and (d) re-application. Two raters with organizational experience, in addition to the developer, were trained to use the instrument. They participated in all phases of the formative development of the maturity model. The resulting estimation of the instrument's validity is based on convergent results of four analyses; (a) content validation by comparison of the new instrument with existing instruments assessing capacity to determine the extent to which it assesses important dimensions of organizational capacity, (b) construct validation by comparison of an early version of the model with a later version to assess its evolution, (c) estimates of interrater reliability among three raters, and (d) construct validation through feedback from agency staff and governing board members and feedback from staff involved in funding those agencies. The results of these analyses are mixed, not establishing statistical conclusion validity, but showing promise for the instrument in its formative stage of development.

"The papers in this volume were presented at the Fifteenth Conference on African Linguistics ... Though the papers here are called "précis", they are really full papers.", Includes bibliographies

Cover title, Bibliography: p. 74