Highlights the important contributions of responsive evaluation's orientation to local issues and qualitative methods, but rejects responsive evaluation's relativity in favor of deliberation as a vehicle for adjudicating among competing evaluative claims. The great strength of responsive evaluation is that it helped break the intellectual…

Explores two issues that have strongly influenced much of what has happened in evaluation in recent decades. The quantitative-qualitative debate has been fueled by changes in theories of causation. The second issue, that of the fact-value dichotomy, can be dealt with through the realization that facts and values are not separate kinds of entities,…

Chelimsky, former head of the Program Evaluation and Methodology Division of the General Accounting Office, suggested that advocacy by evaluators destroys their credibility. Evaluators should, this author argues, be advocates for democracy and the public interest, with the question being how explicitly and how defensibly. (SLD)

The large government market in evaluation that has developed in recent years does not follow the idealized image of open markets because of the contracting process, which means that a few firms conduct most evaluations. To produce honest, unbiased evaluations, evaluation ethics must take government market factors into consideration. (SLD)

Discusses the following aspects of educational evaluation: (1) structural changes; (2) conceptual changes; (3) mixed methods and unraveling consensus; (4) utilization of findings; (5) the role of values; and (6) the role of politics. Discusses how evaluation moved from monolithic to pluralistic, reflecting the change from consensus to pluralism in…

Discusses the use of transaction-cost economics in measuring the impact of educational reforms and whether these reforms are likely to succeed in the "real life" of schools. Several current educational reforms are judged on the basis of their transaction costs and consequent prospects for success. (GR)