Deciding whether and how to use assessments to evaluate students' social and emotional (SE) knowledge, attitudes, and skills requires the development and critical appraisal of an assessment plan. At the state, district, and school levels, education leaders and staff can benefit from reviewing best practices and using a structured format to arrive…

Education in the 21st century is awakening to a call for students who are not only proficient with academic content but who also have developed the social and emotional (SE) knowledge, attitudes, and skills that are necessary for success in college and careers. This brief refers to that combination of knowledge, attitudes, and skills as SE…

Assessing individuals' social and emotional (SE) knowledge, attitudes, and skills is a complex task. It requires careful consideration of the assessment purpose, rigor, practicality, burden, and ethics. Once you have considered these factors and have determined that you are, in fact, "Ready to Assess," you are ready to act and choose an…

Internal evaluators encounter risks but also significant opportunities to strengthen organizational and professional ethics. Potential contributions depend, in part, on the conjunction of ethics and evaluation in the role of the internal evaluator as the person specially commissioned to investigate value and render judgment based on evidence…

This chapter features a recent conversation with Dr. Arnold J. Love, a long-time proponent of internal evaluation and one of the most cited internal evaluation authors. In 1983, Love edited the first issue of "New Directions for Program Evaluation" on the topic of internal evaluation. He is the author of the book "Internal…

Draws practical suggestions from "The Program Evaluation Standards" (Joint Committee, 1994) relevant to issues of disclosure of evaluation findings and arranges these suggestions to simplify the issues for evaluators. Suggestions should help evaluators decide when they can legitimately report findings beyond contractual agreements. (SLD)

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)

This paper examines issues involved in conducting evaluations when participation by the target groups, typically minorities and disadvantaged groups, may put them in jeopardy. Argues that participation by target groups as cooperative partners throughout the evaluation is a way of addressing this dilemma. (SLD)

This paper reviews models of program evaluation. Major topics and issues found in the evaluation literature include quantitative versus qualitative approaches, identification and involvement of stakeholders, formulation of research questions, collection of data, analysis and interpretation of data, reporting of results, evaluation utilization, and…

"The Program Evaluation Standards," established by 16 professional associations, identify evaluation principles that should result in improved program evaluations that address utility, propriety, feasibility, and accuracy. This digest summarizes these standards. Guidelines and illustrative cases to assist in meeting these standards are…

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)

In this context, ethics refers to a set of normative standards for resolving dilemmas that policy analysts or evaluators often face with regard to what they should do in performing their roles in the interests of societal desirability. The dilemmas relate to: (1) prediction versus prediction plus prescription; (2) evaluation versus evaluation plus…

Ethical issues relating to naturalistic evaluation are addressed, focusing on the role of the evaluator, problems of privacy and data gathering techniques, and issues relating to the use/abuse of findings. Benefits and costs of the naturalistic approach to program evaluation are also identified. (EGS)

A sample of 459 American Evaluation Association members was surveyed about ethical challenges they encountered in evaluation work. Respondents report a wide variety of ethical conflicts, with evaluators frequently pressured to compromise their roles as scientists and the evaluation product. A framework is proposed for interpreting these findings.…

The Senate confirmation hearings concerning Robert Gates as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) highlight the problems evaluators share with the CIA of keeping policy imperatives out of the search for truth. The CIA at least has a structure for keeping information pure, but many evaluations do not. (SLD)