ABSTRACT
For a good fifty years, the educational research and evaluation community has tried to find procedures that have local legitimacy, technical robustness, and the capacity to move a ‘client’ public along a recommended trajectory. No one has succeeded cleanly, but several communities, including the community represented in this set of papers, are still at it. It is, in fact, a tall order. How to provide crucial evaluative information unequivocally? How to make certain that this information is understood and actually used in sensible ways? How to marshal this data in order to consolidate or reorient the implementation of new measures?
