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Abstract

Program evaluation provides a powerful tool for meeting the formative and summative evaluation needs of school programs. Although a number of program evaluation approaches for special education programs have been cited in the literature, there is little evidence to show how far school districts have gone beyond compliance monitoring in their efforts to evaluate special education programs. This article presents the results of a national survey of 145 districts on the topic of program evaluation in special education to ascertain whether or not districts have taken a proactive, systematic approach to evaluating their special education programs. A number of features associated with program evaluation were explored, specifically, (a) preplanning, (b) who evaluates special education programs, (c) the focus of evaluation activities, (d) methods for obtaining evaluative information, (e) criteria for judging program effectiveness, and (f) the perceived benefits of the evaluation process.

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Features of Program Evaluation in Special Education

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