Since 2007, two taxonomies have been proposed to identify the components of evaluation practice that may be specified in an evaluation policy. Little is known, however, about how these taxonomies align with evaluation policies developed by philanthropic foundations. Through thematic analysis, this article first compares 12 foundation evaluation…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. Assessment means different things, but it almost always includes accreditation reporting. In Part 1: David Eubanks describes what went wrong with the accreditation standards on learning assessment and the compliance culture that they created. This…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1, David Eubanks advocates for a collaborative model of assessment as the field enters a fourth decade of low return on investment. In Part 2, Megan R. Good laments the opportunity cost of continuing the define-measure-improve assessment model…

Advocacy outcomes are not self-evident. Identifying advocacy outcomes is extremely difficult because they are often intangible, arising from (personal) interactions, and they are not always traceable. This challenges conventional evaluation methods, which is recognized in the advocacy evaluation literature. However, current evaluation methods…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1: "Assessment Standards are Broken," David Eubanks highlights the challenges with the assessment standards articulated by institutional accreditors. In this article, Part 2: Megan R. Good, discusses the opportunity costs faced and…

We argue that student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are a key tactic for justifying and maintaining white male dominance in US higher education. As such, tenure and promotion processes that rely on SETs as a measure of 'teaching quality' reproduce racial and gender inequality. We situate the contemporary use of SETs amidst a long history of…

As evaluators, we are often asked to determine whether policies and programs provide value for the resources invested. Addressing that question can be a quandary, and, in some cases, evaluators question whether cost-benefit analysis is fit for this purpose. With increased interest globally in social enterprise, impact investing, and social impact…

Efforts to promote professionalism in evaluation, whether through certification, credentialing, or other path, are not new, but there is a new push to adopt sets of essential evaluator competencies, both in the United States and globally, that are intended to advance professionalism of the field. This emphasis on professionalism is relevant to the…

Practitioners are being placed under increasing pressure to evaluate the success of their outreach activities, both by government and by their own universities. Based in a reductionist doctrine of "evidence-based practice", there is a desire to demonstrate the effectiveness and value-for-money across activities that now account for…

In a recent contribution to "Sociological Methods & Research," Baumgartner and Epple (B&E) employ Coincidence Analysis (CNA) to explain the outcome of the vote on the Swiss minaret initiative of 2009. Although the authors also present a substantive argument, their principal objective is to prove the superiority of CNA over…

The five thoughtful papers included in this issue of "Educational Researcher" ("ER") raise new questions about the use of value-added methods (VAMs) to estimate teachers' contributions to students' learning as part of personnel evaluation. The papers address both technical and implementation concerns, considering potential…

In this article, Hartley notes the difficulties of using questionnaires to assess the efficiency of new instructional methods and highlights nine issues that researchers must consider. Hartley continues the discussion about the use of questionnaires and suggests that psychology teachers can help improve the teaching of psychology by drawing…

The Scylla and Charybdis in this discussion of teacher evaluation are standardized achievement test data on the one hand, and classroom observational systems on the other. These are the two most common methods used to judge teachers' competency. Both have serious flaws: the former primarily with validity, the latter primarily with reliability. At…

The process of identifying students as creatively gifted provides numerous challenges for educators. Although many schools assess for creativity in identifying students for gifted and talented services, the relationship between creativity and giftedness is often not fully understood. This article reviews commonly used methods of creativity…

While regression discontinuity has usually been applied retrospectively to secondary data, it is even more attractive when applied prospectively. In a prospective design, data collection can be focused on cases near the discontinuity, thereby improving internal validity and substantially increasing precision. Furthermore, such prospective…