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The Role of Evaluation in Educational Reform: What Evaluation Skills Should Be Required of School Leaders?
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| Presenter(s):
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| Tara Shepperson, Eastern Kentucky University, tara.shepperson@eku.edu
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| Abstract:
PreK-12 educational administration is a discipline in flux. Long criticized as partially responsible for the failure of American public education, doctoral educational administration training is undergoing national revision. Initiatives including the Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate (CPED) and other reforms seek to dramatically revise training programs for administration practitioners away from the traditional academic structure towards a system that better prepares educational leaders to meet the needs of modern schools. Part of this transformation includes moving away from academic research to inquiry into solutions for real problems facing schools. What is less clear is the role evaluation will have in these training programs for school administrators. This presentation looks at the evidence from existing documents, literature, and interviews about the perceived value and role of evaluation in administrator preparation and American schools.
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Evaluation Quality and Program Evaluation Skills for School Leaders: An Analysis of School Improvement Plans
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| Presenter(s):
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| Tamara M Walser, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, walsert@uncw.edu
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| Abstract:
Given increasing accountability requirements, school improvement planning has become common and mandated in schools across the United States. Although State Departments of Education often provide guidelines and templates for developing School Improvement Plans, program evaluation skills are a necessary part of school improvement planning and implementation. These skills include needs assessment and context evaluation, goal development, literature review and evaluation of research, implementation monitoring, formative evaluation, and outcome evaluation. Additionally, educators must understand and apply standards of quality evaluation. The purpose of this presentation is to present the results of a content analysis of a sample of 50 School Improvement Plans, focusing on the quality of evaluation presented in the plans, and related implications for training school leaders in program evaluation to build evaluation capacity for school improvement.
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