From my personal point of view, the role of a program evaluator is to gather information about the thoughts and experiences of individuals impacted by the program and to use the findings to inform program improvement. However, participants in the evaluation may be reluctant to share their full thoughts due to factors such as power imbalances and a…

The Columbus Promise, a place-based tuition-free college program for graduates of Columbus City Schools, was created in 2021 and began granting scholarships to the high school graduating class of 2022. The initial phase of the Columbus Promise is a three-year pilot covering the high school graduating classes of 2022, 2023, and 2024. The overriding…

Effective, engaging teacher collaboration contributes to continuous school improvement and overall student success. This formative, internal program evaluation used a combination of objectives-based and improvement-focused models to determine what worked well in mandated PLCs at MHS, what aspects of these PLCs needed improvement, and what…

Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) SCORE Academy is an alternative learning high school composed of two distinct programs. SCORE Academy Re-engagement (A) serves students who are 16 to 21 years old and need to earn between one and 10 credits toward graduation. SCORE Academy Reassignment (B) serves students who have been reassigned by the…

Academic mentoring programs promote high school completion for at-risk youth. The purpose of this study was to hear the voice of youth in order to inform program services and develop best practices for meeting their academic needs. Using a grounded theory approach, we conducted 14 focus groups to examine high school students' perceptions and…

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) is continuing its five-year grant, "An Equitable Pathway to In-Demand STEM Careers," which began in Fall 2021 to facilitate Hispanic students' degree completion and career preparation in STEM fields. In its third year, the grant team followed the original proposal to: 1. Offer effective…

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) continues its five-year grant, "An Equitable Pathway to In-Demand STEM Careers," that began in Fall 2021 to facilitate Hispanic students' degree completion and career preparation in STEM fields. In the second year, the grant team has made satisfactory progress in offering summer and winter…

Public schools follow school improvement guidelines to improve outcomes for students. This study utilized a quantitative method with a correlational design to discern any relationship between the NCStar School Improvement Program Indicators and student proficiency scores. The population for the study was 636 public high schools implementing the…

This document is a report on the research which was designed to evaluate the affirmative action policy for ethnic minorities in Georgia. The mixed research methods were utilized in the study. Specifically, the following research methods were used: (1) Survey of 12th graders in non-Georgian schools; (2) Survey of the students in the One-Year…

The Afterschool Centers on Education of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Austin Area (ACE BGCA) provided academic assistance, enrichment, college and career readiness, and family engagement activities at four elementary, three middle, and two high schools through Cycle 10 funding through the Texas Education Agency. ACE BGCA was found to have a…

We conducted a youth participatory evaluation of a bullying prevention curriculum before the curriculum was implemented in communities. We partnered with youths from a young women leaders' program to reduce the number of lessons in an existing curriculum and determine which activities were likely to have the greatest impact. To evaluate the…

In Chicago, over a quarter of students fail at least one semester of algebra in their ninth grade year, and only 13% of students who fail both semesters of Algebra I in ninth grade graduate in 4 years. Offering credit recovery options is one strategy to deal with high failure rates. The primary goal of credit recovery programs is to give students…

The purpose of this program evaluation was to evaluate the impact of CORE District's Breakthrough Success Community (BTSC) Program at an urban Title I high school located in Southern California. BTSC aims to improve the ninth-grade experience through a focus on five key change drivers and the implementation of improvement science. Through teacher…

Blending high-quality and rigorous research with pure evaluation practice can often be best accomplished through thoughtful collaboration. The evaluation of a high school drug prevention program (All Stars Senior) is an example of how perceived competing purposes and methodologies can coexist to investigate formative and summative outcome…

This study evaluated the Memory Bridge Initiative (MBI), an educational, experiential program pairing high school students with older adults who have dementia. A qualitative, single group design with baseline and follow-up measures examined whether or not students would have a positive learning experience while gaining newfound appreciation and…