Evaluation des modellversuchsprogramms "Qualitätsverbesserung in Schulen und Schulsystemen (QuiSS)"

While criteria and methods for evaluating specific school improvement projects are relatively well established, little experience exists with respect to an overarching evaluation of a broad range of diverse school improvement projects, in 1999, the German Federal and State Commission of Educational Planning (BLK - Bund-Länder-Kommission für Bildungsplanung und Forschungsförderung) launched such a large program, QuiSS (Quality Improvement in Schools and School Systems) that included 15 state-based projects with 140 schools. The paper describes the organization of this program and delineates the conception, coordination, and administration of a formative and summative evaluation process that considers general program dimensions as well as project-specific aspects. The evaluation uses multiple perspectives from the stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, headmasters, school administration, project management). Teacher professionalization, as one of the general evaluation dimensions, is presented as an example in more detail.