Many studies of education interventions make claims about impacts on students' outcomes. Some studies have designs that enable readers to make causal inferences about the effects of an intervention but others have designs that do not permit these types of conclusions. To help policymakers, practitioners, and others make sense of study results, the…

Funders and policymakers are increasingly recognizing the afterschool field for its vital role in supporting the social and emotional growth and academic achievement of school-age youth. Although this recognition is welcome, it often comes with increased expectations for high-quality research demonstrating the value of programming. To satisfy…

This article presents a content analysis of the 2013 School Leadership Program (SLP) grants. SLP projects provide a unique opportunity for participants in the field to explore innovative leadership preparation and development and their impact on program participants, schools, school districts, and students. The article begins with an overview of…

Contradictory findings from "well-implemented" rigorous evaluations invite researchers to identify the differences that might explain the contradictions, helping to generate testable hypotheses for new research. This panel will examine efforts to ensure that the large number of local evaluations being conducted as part of four…

The purpose of this paper is to share a description of the process used by Fort Hays State University (FHSU) as a self-study of the FHSU alternative certification program, known as Transition to Teaching. Team members used the Quality Indicators designed as a part of a Department of Education Transition to Teaching Grant called the KNOTtT Project.…

This study addresses the central question "How do evaluators' background characteristics relate to their evaluation design choices?" Evaluators were provided with a fictitious description of a school-based program and asked to design an evaluation of that program. Relevant background characteristics such as level of experience,…

It is a special characteristic of all modern societies that people consciously decide on and plan projects designed to improve their social systems. It is their universal predicament that their projects do not always have their intended effects. It seems inevitable that in most countries this common set of problems, combined with the obvious…

Background: Turkey is a fast-developing country facing a lot of different problems. One of the problems is inadequate education. A large project was started to improve Turkish elementary education. The project includes many different purposes from physical refurbishment of school buildings, to increasing technology use in education. The author of…

What kinds of ethical dilemmas do people who are new to the profession of evaluation face? Are they different from the challenges faced by more experienced evaluators? What strategies do they use to resolve them? These questions were the starting point for the essays included in this issue of the Ethical Challenges section. The essays were written…

A central task of evaluation is to use systematic inquiry to judge the merit, worth, and significance of programs. As a field in education, evaluation began to mature during the 1960s, when policy makers began funding researchers to study the impact of Great Society programs. Since that time, evaluation and policy-making have been intertwined,…

How do evaluation practitioners make choices when they evaluate a program? What function do evaluation theories play in practice? In this article, I report on an exploratory study that examined evaluation practices in France. The research began with observations of practitioners' activities, with a particular focus on the phases of evaluation…

As the number of large federal programs increases, so, too, does the need for a more complete understanding of how to conduct evaluations of such complex programs. The research literature has documented the benefits of stakeholder participation in smaller-scale program evaluations. However, given the scope and diversity of projects in multi-site…

In 2001, Congress established the Teaching American History (TAH) program, which seeks to improve student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of traditional American history as a separate subject within the core curriculum. Under this program, grants are awarded to local education agencies (LEAs), which…

Increasing calls for accountability in education have promoted improvements in quantitative evaluation approaches that measure student performance; however, this has often been to the detriment of qualitative approaches, reducing the richness of educational evaluation as an enterprise. In this article the authors assert that it is not merely…

This article provides a brief summary of the seven articles in this special issue through the lens of the concept of "caring reflexivity". In joining "caring" and "reflexivity", we deepen the conversation about what constitutes reflexivity, encouraging an explicit focus on the relational. Revisiting the first article,…