Evaluation in Today’s World. Veronica G. Thomas

      Reflect on the works of African American evaluators of color during the pre-Brown era and the founding of the Journal of Negro Education discussed in the preceding sections. Now, organize into pairs and discuss the potential impact of the omission of such early works on our historical understanding of evaluation and evaluators’ role during the early part of the 20th century.

      Evaluation in 1960–2000

      The 1960s and early 1970s represent the “Golden Age” of evaluation (Rossi & Wright, 1984) with a vision of the federal government being a major patron of large-scale social experimentation. The government passed legislation that required recipients of federal funds to set aside monies for evaluation of program results. In 1978, the federal government passed an act requiring all federal cabinet departments to establish high-level evaluation units, known as Offices of Inspector General, and many agencies had created internal evaluation offices and units (Datta, 2003). During the 1980s, however, there were major reductions in evaluations, especially at the federal level, under the Ronald Reagan administration with budget cutbacks in human services and entitlement programs. By 2000, there was a renewed interest in program evaluation, particularly at the federal level. The sections that follow highlight some of the major legislations, events, and people influencing the evaluation field between 1960 and 2000.

      Federal Legislation and Great Society Programs

      During the 1960s, under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, numerous social programs were initiated aimed at providing for the well-being of the nation’s citizens and protecting national prosperity. In response to a (then) national poverty rate of 19%, during his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Johnson announced the War on Poverty/Great Society programs, which included legislation that provided billions of dollars for reforms aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice via reducing unemployment, crime, urban deterioration, and inadequate access to medical care and mental health treatment. Systematic evaluation was mandated in several of the most important pieces of Great Society legislation. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, for example, was passed as part of the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty, and it was designed to improve educational equity for students from lower-income families. This provided, for the first time, federal funds to school districts serving poor students. This legislation mandated that the government evaluate standards for student performance and teacher quality with resources set aside to undertake these activities. Legislative authorization also required evaluation of both the housing allowance program in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Comprehensive Employment and Training Act programs (Rossi & Wright, 1984).

      Within five years, Johnson’s vision included the enactment of nearly 200 pieces of legislation and an unprecedented bold set of programs aimed at improving Americans’ everyday lives. Concomitant with the increase in social programs during the 1960s, there was also a rise in the demand to impose accountability requirements in order to determine how the funds were being used and the effects of these programs. As a result of the proliferation of these programs, by the end of the 1960s, evaluation research had become a growth industry (Rossi et al., 2004), and its applications grew substantially beyond government-financed programs and educational settings to other areas such as corporations, faith-based organizations, and foundations.

      The Professionalization of the Field

      The 1970s, in particular, were an important time in the evolution of evaluation research as an independent branch of study. With this growing independence, evaluation was emerging as an independent profession related to, but quite distinct from, its forebears of research and testing (Madaus & Stufflebeam, 2000). Various activities were taking place in the 1970s and 1980s that characterized evaluation’s independence as a profession. These included a growth in evaluation scholarship, the establishment of professional societies in evaluation, development of evaluation standards and codes of conduct, and an increase in graduate training and professional development.

      Growth of Evaluation Scholarship

      In 1967, the first full-scale description of the application of research methods to evaluation was published in a text, Evaluative Research: Principles and Practices in Public Service and Social Action Programs, by Edward Suchman. In the introductory chapter of his book, Suchman says that

      the growing demand for evaluation constitutes the rationale for this report [book]. Unfortunately, the theory and method of evaluative research have lagged far behind the development of the scientific method…. Today, as modern man [sic] turns more and more to basic research for his answers to practical problems, a great need exists for the methodological development of evaluative research as a reliable and valid means of testing the degree to which scientific knowledge is being successful put to practical use. (p. 6)

      Other notable texts published in the 1970s include Carol H. Weiss’s Evaluation Research: Methods for Assessing Program Effectiveness (initially published in 1972); Elmer L. Struening and Marcia Guttentag’s Handbook of Evaluation Research (initially published in 1975); Peter H. Rossi and Howard E. Freeman’s Evaluation: A Systematic Approach (initially published in 1979); and Michael Q. Patton’s Utilization-Focused Evaluation (initially published in 1978). These texts are currently still in use, and some have been revised numerous times such as Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, now in its eighth edition (Rossi, Lipsey, & Henry, 2019). Additionally, during the 1970s–1980s, various journals dedicated to program evaluation were launched. Evaluation Review, published in 1977 by SAGE, became the first journal designed to advance the practice of evaluation and to publish the results of high-quality evaluations. By the end of the 1990s, there were numerous journals dedicated to scholarship-related evaluation theory, methods, practice, and research (see supplemental resources at the end of the chapter).

      Establishment of Professional Societies in Evaluation

      Two U.S.-based professional societies were formed to foster evaluation as a profession and a science. The Evaluation Research Society was established in 1976 to serve the professional needs of the growing number of people engaged in program evaluation and was composed primarily of academic and quantitative researchers. The Evaluation Network, also founded in 1976, consisted mostly of practitioners (e.g., school-based evaluators) who were more interested in conducting evaluations than concerned about theory and methods issues. As indicated in Table 3.2, in 1986, the Evaluation Research Society and Evaluation Network merged to form the AEA. The association currently has over 7,000 members representing all 50 states in the United States as well as over 80 foreign countries (www.eval.org).

      Graduate Training and Professional Development in Evaluation

      In the 1960s, there was only a paucity of well-trained evaluation specialists with broad training or experience. With the increasing demands for accountability and documentation of the effectiveness of government-financed programs, there was a need for more skilled evaluators to complete this work. By the mid-1970s, evaluation was recognized as a legitimate professional field that possessed its own core of knowledge, specialized concepts, methods of inquiry, and particular strategies that could be taught in graduate-level courses. To address the void in evaluation training, in the 1980s, graduate-level evaluation specializations and/or courses were flourishing and being taught in many university departments such as education, psychology, public policy, sociology, and health administration. In addition to graduate courses in evaluation, there were increased opportunities for professional development to enhance practicing evaluators’ knowledge and skills.

      Establishment of Standards and Codes of Conduct

      Another indicator of the growth and professionalization of a field is the development of standards, guiding principles,