THE PRACTICE: Evaluation - Periodic reflection on the progress of family and community involvement helps to assure that the partnerships are serving the needs and utilizing the most valuable strengths of each partner.
Content Presented By:
RMC Research Corporation

What is it?

In a comprehensive and systematic way, the school should revisit goals, assess progress, and make course adjustments in its family and community involvement programs. Evaluation efforts might focus on the satisfaction of the partners in terms of their roles, accomplishments resulting from family and community involvement (especially those relating directly to student achievement), lessons learned, and new elements to add.

Evaluation methods should be broad-based (including both qualitative and quantitative methods such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys), collecting information from the key players, as well as parents and community members in general. While basic information can be helpful, such as the number of parents who attend meetings, it is also important to look deeply into important issues, such as how leadership has emerged and what strategies have worked to develop leadership. Careful consideration should be given to how the original vision of family/community involvement has changed, what the new expectations are, and how programs and policies will support new directions.

Questions to Think About:

• What kind of evaluation is conducted to assess the effectiveness of the family and community involvement program?

• How thorough is the evaluation and what components could be added?

• How are the lessons of evaluation used?

• How are parents and community members involved in the evaluation design and implementation? How are they involved in the interpretation of results and the development of recommendations for change?

• Specifically, how do these changes relate to student achievement?

This resource is developed and maintained by The Education Alliance at Brown University. Seed funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Send comments to: loom@alliance.brown.edu