| Session Title: Instruments, Product, and Policy |
| Multipaper Session 230 to be held in the Granite Room Section A on Thursday, Nov 6, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM |
| Sponsored by the Pre-K - 12 Educational Evaluation TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Tysza Ghanda, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, tgandha2@uiuc.edu |
| Abstract: The intersection of evaluation and policy calls to the fore questions of the effect of evaluations on policy decisions. This mulitipaper session takes a broad to narrow approach to explore how instruments used in evaluation lead to results which, in turn, affect policy decision-making within the context of public education. To examine the use of evaluation in constructing policies for public education, the first paper will provide an overview related to the ways in which instruments gather information and the ways in which those methods determine the types of information gathered, and subsequently, the policies that are constructed based on the information gathered such as funding decisions, grants, access, and college affordability. The second and third papers will explore the aforementioned role of evaluation instruments within specific contexts, namely instruments utilized in school-based evaluation and No Child Left Behind to make evaluative judgments about school quality. |
| Instruments, Product, and Policy |
| Amarachuku Enyia, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, aenyia@law.uiuc.edu |
| To examine the impact of evaluation instruments, this paper will bring attention to the ways in which instruments gather information and the ways in which those methods determine the types of information gathered, and subsequently, the policies that are constructed based on the information gathered such as funding decisions, grants, access, and college affordability. To do this, this the paper will highlight how instruments from a more Western context are used to measure and examine various phenomenon in Non-Western contexts, thereby yielding inappropriate findings and subsequent ill conceived policies. |
| Rethinking No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Using Critical Race Theory |
| Jori Hall, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, jorihall@uiuc.edu |
| The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy makes evaluative judgments of schools in this nation based primarily on standardized tests. As a result, changes are made within schools and subsequent policies are informed by those changes. However, these changes to schools and policies, more often than not, eschew the social, economic, and political contexts of schools. This traditional cycle of educational reform must be revisited. Accordingly, this paper utilizes critical race theory as a lens to investigate the measures used by NCLB to make evaluative judgments about the quality of schools as well as the products of those judgments as it relates to educational policy. |
| Developing Culturally Relevant Instruments |
| Maurice Samuels, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, msamuels@uiuc.edu |
| The author will discuss the importance in developing instruments that are culturally and contextually relevant to the evaluand. Specifically, using findings from an instrumental case study, the author will explore how instruments that considered the cultural context of a school assisted an internal school-based evaluation team in making the 'right decisions' that supported improvements to student learning. Therefore, this paper will share strategies used by the evaluator to develop the instruments as well as argue why the evaluation field should consider culture and context in identifying and developing data collection instruments (Frierson, Hood, & Hughes, 2002). |