Evaluation in Today’s World. Veronica G. Thomas
on HIV prevention, and later on two large place-based randomized controlled experiments on improving medical practices.
In an interview conducted by Francisco et al. (2001), Leviton provided an interesting (and still timely) insight that about evaluation:
Regarding evaluation, I learned how incredibly important it is to take culture into account. When I was in Pennsylvania, we had a project in the central mountain region of the state, and we all thought we understood their Appalachian culture. We found out quickly that we were quite wrong. One should never assume that one knows enough about this. Go into the situation with an open mind and learn what you can from the community. Secondly, I also learned how important it is to remain flexible about evaluation methods. We really need to have the questions drive the methods we use, and not vice versa. (p. 204)
Leviton was president of the AEA in the year 2000. She has been a scholar on evaluation methods and practice, particularly in the area of disease prevention, publishing over 100 articles and books and providing oversight on more than 100 evaluations.
Beatriz Chu Clewell
Beatriz Chu Clewell has been involved in evaluation practice over several decades. Much of her work has focused on breaking barriers and moving more women and underrepresented minorities into the technology and science workforce. While Clewell may not be well known in the academic evaluation community, she is very well known in the NSF, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and evaluation practice communities. Clewell spent over 20 years conducting research on the access of underrepresented groups—specifically, racial/ethnic minorities and women—to science, mathematics, and engineering fields. She was a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, from 1994 to 2008, where she directed the Evaluation Studies and Equity Research Program in the Education Policy Center and led several large-scale research projects and program evaluations.
Clewell has conducted a number of evaluations of teacher recruitment programs, including the Pathways to Teaching Careers Program, for which data on 42 programs and close to 3,000 participants over a six-year period were collected. The aim of many of these evaluations was to identify the policies and practices that characterize schools where all students achieve. She has also conducted multiple evaluations of national programs to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM.
Further, Clewell led an analysis of data to determine the effect of teacher race/ethnicity on student achievement in mathematics and reading, an evaluation of the NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program involving 27 alliances of approximately 200 institutions nationwide. The aim of many of Clewell’s evaluations was to identify policies and practices that inhibited or encouraged access of women and minorities to fields where they were underrepresented. Her impact on the STEM evaluation community is immense.
Influential 20th-Century Evaluator: An Activity
The previous sections highlighted a few of the prominent evaluators of the 20th century, particularly those doing important work from the 1940s to the late 1990s. The following activity gives readers an opportunity to research an influential 20th-century evaluator and learn more about his or her life, professional experiences, and contributions to the field.
Activity: Research an Influential Person or Event
Organize into groups of two or three and work toward giving a 10- to 15-minute presentation on a historical event or influential figure in evaluation during the 20th century. First, identify an influential person or event relevant to the evolution of program evaluation. Provide a biographical sketch of the person or an overview of the event, identifying key contributions that were added to the evaluation field. Among the contributions discussed, which does your group feel are the most significant, and why?
Discuss what you learned during your inquiry. Why was this person or event important to evaluation practice, scholarship, and/or society? Finally, consider the implications of these contributions in today’s context.
21st-Century Evaluation: Expanding the Focus
At the start of the 21st century, evaluation was in a boom period with increasing diversity in theoretical and methodological options available to evaluators. Stufflebeam and Coryn (2014, p. 39) referred to the period of 2005–2014 as the “age of global and multi disciplinary expansion” with several characteristics: (a) over 50 professional evaluation societies throughout the world, (b) a growing evaluation profession encompassing a wide range of disciplines and evaluators from various disciplinary perspectives and backgrounds who are increasingly exchanging information, (c) studying in interdisciplinary degree programs, (c) more collaboration on evaluation projects and publications, and (d) meeting together in broadly focused evaluation conventions and meetings. With Congress under increased pressure to balance the federal budget, new calls for accountability resulted in an escalating demand on social programs to demonstrate their worth. Evaluation in the 21st century can be described, in part, as a profession and practice influenced by the strengthened legislation for evaluation at the federal level; expansion of evaluation approaches, paradigms, and methodologies; and increased emphasis on social justice and diversity.
The new millennium began with a vision of (large- and small-scale) evaluations taking place in a wide range of settings with more diverse evaluators (or evaluation teams) than in earlier decades. There was greater buy-in across various audiences of the value of evaluation, in part, due to the increasing demand of funders for evidence of program process and outcomes. There were also calls for evaluation to more accurately represent the voices of the less powerful and marginalized in an increasingly diverse society and a changing political and policy context. There was an expansion of capacity-building efforts, particularly in relation to increasing the pipeline for more ethnically diverse evaluators. The 21st century also began with greater respect for methodological diversity—that is, being more inclusive in the types of methods and approaches needed to establish rigor and credibility. There was increased focus on expanding evaluation use and limiting misuse. These, and other issues, are discussed in the following sections.
Table 3.4 highlights some key evaluation-related events and people of the 21st century. Similar to Table 3.2 reflecting significant issues in the 20th century, Table 3.4 also includes events and people not limited to specific evaluation studies or evaluators, per se, but highlights specific individuals and activities that contribute to the current thinking in evaluation scholarship, methodology, and practice.
Table 3.4
Strengthening Evaluation at the Federal Level
The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), originally passed in 1993 (PL 103–62) and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, was strengthened by the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010, signed into law by President Barack Obama. The law’s intent was to provide a framework within which that government plans, implements, and evaluates its programs. In January 2019, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (PL 115–435) was signed into law. Under this law, federal agencies are expected to expand their capacity for engaging in evaluation, including designating evaluation officers, developing learning agendas, producing annual evaluation plans, and enabling a workforce to conduct evaluations. As the following case study illustrates, there has also been a strengthening of program evaluation at the level of particular various federal agencies.
Case Study: