Testing and Evaluation:

Learning from the Projects We Fund

Summary

Corporate support of education by any index - dollars contributed, school/business partnerships, volunteer work, equipment donated, scholarships - has grown enormously over the past two decades.

By all indicators, corporate involvement in our nation's schools will continue to grow through the end of the century.

Given their fiscal and human investment, and the nation's economic and civic stake in improving our schools, corporations need answers to critical questions about the projects they fund. Such questions include:

• Are we making a difference?
• What's working?
• Under what conditions?
• With what populations?
• Are our efforts contributing to educational reform?
• Are we advancing our corporate philanthropic goals?

Answers to these questions hinge on systematic evaluations of corporate-supported educational reform efforts in general and of individual projects in particular.

Now more than ever, in order to maximize the impact of their limited contributions budgets, corporate funders need the skills to plan and commission appropriate project evaluations, oversee their implementation, and correctly interpret results.

Since evaluations of educational programs almost always use test information as the principle measure of what students know and can do, it is imperative that corporate funders also understand the strengths and limitations of the current testing technology.

The purpose of this report is to give contributions administrators an overview of issues in program evaluation, including the place of testing in such evaluations, so that they are in a better position to plan, commission, monitor, evaluate, and use evaluations of the projects they fund.

In order to accomplish these goals, we start by exploring metaphors and models for educational evaluation in the first chapter.

We consider how metaphors used to describe the educative process and schools can strongly influence approaches to program evaluation. We also describe the three main approaches to educational program evaluation.

In the second chapter, we offer some practical how-to advice on commissioning, monitoring, evaluating, and using evaluations.

The third chapter is devoted to educational tests and issues related to their use in program evaluation.