Program Evaluation Tools that Increase Educator Effectiveness
As part of the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Building Evidence of Effectiveness project, IMPAQ provided ongoing technical assistance and support to improve the quality and rigor of educator effectiveness program evaluations. (IMPAQ was acquired by AIR in 2020.) The SEED grant program provides funding to increase the number of highly effective educators by supporting the implementation of evidence-based preparation, development, or enhancement opportunities for educators.
IMPAQ provided ongoing support to evaluators of SEED grantees to ensure that evaluations meet rigorous What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards for scientifically based research. IMPAQ and its partners provide frequent, individualized analytic support to SEED evaluation teams and work with the U.S. Department of Education to organize annual convening’s for SEED grantees and evaluators.
For example, IMPAQ created a centralized repository of existing and new resources designed to support high-quality evaluations that can be implemented on short cycles and can be conducted on smaller budgets. Many of these resources are useful for evaluators who want to design and implement rigorous, low-cost, short-turnaround experiments and quasi-experiments. Examples of the resources include:
- Tools and checklists to support implementation of high-quality evaluations;
- Guides with practical recommendations for implementing low-cost rigorous evaluations;
- Handbooks for developing high-quality surveys, observation tools, logs, and assessments;
- Rubrics for assessing the quality and rigor of different evaluation designs;
- Guides for producing evidence of a program’s effectiveness on short cycles; and
- Case studies describing how others have addressed specific evaluation challenges.
Watch this 4-minute video to learn how IMPAQ helped the U.S. Department of Education create a centralized repository of easy-to-use program evaluation resources.