Correlates of quality educational programs

Preliminary evaluation findings are presented that explore relationships between educational program quality and program characteristics such as program type, security level, aftercare, teacher certification, facility size, and private versus public provider. Several program characteristics are found to be related to measurements of educational program quality. Among the major quality characteristics are proportion of program teachers that are professionally certified, smaller sized facilities versus larger facilities, level of aftercare services, and provider sources, with private for-profit providers being the lowest performing and public providers being the highest performing. The article closes with description of the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's continuing evaluation of correlates to educational program quality through the continued development of a comprehensive database.