Definitions

Self-report surveys are affected by respondents' interpretation of the questions. For the monitoring evaluation's mail surveys, the organizational role of the respondent, for example, might affect his/her perceptions of monitoring and improvement planning in his/her state. In addition, although the survey included a glossary of terms, it is not clear that all respondents referred to that glossary when responding to the survey. In the course of the first wave of site visits, evaluators concluded that states do not share a common monitoring and improvement planning vocabulary. For example, many states use the term focused monitoring to describe their monitoring process. Some states use the term because they monitor using a select number of indicators to measure progress. Other states use the term because they monitor a small number of LEAs/monitoring units. These definitional ambiguities make it difficult to compare monitoring systems based on survey data.