4. Establish a Planning System

In this type of project, because it is a major undertaking, you have chosen to limit yourself to implementing the new planning system and leave the determination of its effectiveness to a later time.

There is nothing wrong with this. Often the task of implementing a new program or system is such a major effort that it would not be possible during the time of your dissertation period for you to also carry out an evaluation of the planning system's impact on such things as resource allocations and the like.

However, though establishing a new planning system is an entirely respectable task in its own right, having chosen to do only the implementation in your project, you will not be able to reach any conclusions or make any statements about the new planning system's impact on resource allocations, student achievement, and so on. That will have to await the completion of an outcome evaluation.

Your evaluation will be of the formative (not the summative) type. Your evaluation task is to determine if the major phases of the planning system are in place and operational. Thus, you will need to assemble credible, objective evidence (not simply your own judgments) on the following types of questions:

1. Has a new mission statement been completed, published, approved, and endorsed?
2. Have new goals, objectives, and priorities been established?
3. Have outcome indictors for the new objectives been established?
4. Have responsibilities, assignments, and time tables for achieving the new objectives been established?
5. Are the elements, requirements, and responsibilities of the new planning system understood and endorsed by those who must carry them out?

This kind of evaluation will tell you whether your new planning system is operational and potentially capable of having an impact-information that is administratively invaluable. 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.

If you decide that you want to both implement the new planning system and assess its impact on such things as resource allocations, achievement of objectives, and the like, you must carry out both a formative and summative evaluation. See evaluation designs 2, 3, 6, and 8.

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