2. Implement and Determine the Effectiveness of a Program to Improve Student Achievement Scores

This kind of project requires two kinds of evaluation:

1. A formative evaluation to determine if the new program has been implemented.

2. A summative evaluation to determine if the newly implemented program has improved student achievement scores.

I  Formative Evaluation

The task here is to determine how well (or, indeed, if) the new program has been implemented. This is not something that can be taken for granted.

Thus, you will need to assemble credible, objective evidence (not simply your own judgments) on the following types of questions:

1. Does the program exist?
2. Is it operating as it is supposed to?
3. If not, what changes are needed to make it operational?
4. Are funds being appropriately spent?
5. Have the necessary books, materials, and equipment been purchased and made available to the teachers and students?
6. Has the program hired and trained competent staff?
7. Is the program serving the intended students?
8. Are they receiving the intended educational information and services?

This kind of evaluation will tell you whether the program is up and running and potentially capable of having an impact. It is essential to complete this type of evaluation before undertaking a summative, impact, or outcome evaluation. It makes no sense to evaluate the effectiveness of a program that does not exist-even though we regrettably see many instances of this.

II  Summative Evaluation

The two basic questions here are:

• Has there been an improvement on some measure of student achievement?

• Can any improvement that has occurred be confidently attributed to the new program rather than other factors?

There are two preferred evaluation designs for answering these questions:

(1)  Administer pre- and post-tests to both a group of students exposed to the new program and a comparable control group of students who weren't exposed to it. If the gains of the treatment group are statistically and educationally greater than those of the control group, you can confidently conclude that these gains were the result of the new program. Simply administering pre- and post-tests to the treatment or program group without a control group will not do. Scores may have increased because of other conditions or factors besides the new program. For comparison, you need some measure of change under the conditions of non-treatment. (See the section on An Example of the Most Common Pitfall in Evaluating Education Programs in the Short Course on Evaluation Basics.)

(2)  As an alternative, if a control group is not available, you can use what is known as the interrupted time-series design. If test scores are available for several years or periods prior to the introduction of the new program, and there is a marked improvement in these scores immediately following the introduction of the new program that is sustained in following years or periods, you can confidently conclude that the gains were the result of the new program.

For more information on these two designs, see the section on Alternative Summative Evaluation Methods in the Short Course on Evaluation Basics, and references 1 (Campbell), 4 (Cook & Campbell), and 8 (Rossi & Freeman) in the Evaluation References.

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