Evaluation: Foundation for Reform

Program evaluators are often greeted with about as much enthusiasm as IRS auditors. Sometimes seen as intent on finding mistakes and making someone pay for them, by the time evaluators arrive to initiate the process, staff members are frequently damp-palmed and exhausted from making sure the files are all in order and program problems kept to a minimum.

Michael Wischnowski, assistant professor, educational leadership program, sees himself and his colleagues somewhat differently. Picture a green plaid wool raincoat, a drizzling sky, a pipe. “We’re detectives,” Wischnowski explains, “helping people make decisions with information.” The history of evaluation has been tied to reform, he explains; whenever the people want change, they call on evaluators to produce the data. It isn’t always about what’s going wrong, either. The Sauquoit Valley School District engaged Wischnowski’s services to find out what they were “doing right.” The school consistently out- performed peer institutions and next year, it will be teamed with a low-performing school district with similar demographics to find out why, and to figure out how to apply those methods to the latter district.

He allows, though, that evaluators do make people nervous. He tries to put them at ease by explaining that the task is to evaluate the program, not individual employees. Even with the highest degrees of objectivity and professionalism, some evaluations produce answers that make program operators unhappy. “Then we have to practice the art of tactfully telling people things they don’t want to hear,” says Wischnowski.

Sometimes evaluators feel like investigative reporters. In a city where Wischnowski was retained to look at why their special education identification rate was so high, he discovered that the facilities were near a former hazardous waste dump. His recommendations included one to refer the situation to the Environmental Protection Agency and state health department for further study.

Wischnowski currently teaches the course “Measurement, Assessment, and Program Evaluation,” for both master’s and doctoral track educators. His students learn about evaluation standards, like the five guiding principals established by the American Evaluation Association (AEA): systematic inquiry, evaluator competence, integrity/honesty, respect for people, and responsibilities for general and public welfare. In addition to following the AEA principals, Wischnowski also helps his students to see the limitations evaluation has, and its practicalities for decision making. He wants them to be able to understand the juncture where research and program meet, and to see the political and ethical contexts within which they both operate.

Evaluation students get “hands on” experience in the course too. Students in last spring’s class evaluated the Warner School’s PT3 technology program and an inclusion co-teaching project in a nearby rural school district.

The Warner School is well represented in the area of evaluation research, too. Wischnowski and seven members of his evaluation classes made presentations at the AEA conference, attended by 2,000 education professionals, in Washington, D.C., November 4–10.

Doctoral students Elizabeth M. Bentley and Peter Abas joined Wischnowski in presenting a poster session on the Warner School’s “Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3)” project. Wischnowski, with doctoral students Paul Collins and Bonnie Whitney, presented another poster session, “Co-teaching as a Means of Implementing Inclusion.” Warner School doctoral student Colleen Coulter and Mike Wischnowski conducted a roundtable session on the subject of reforming minority scholarship programs. Laurie A. Clayton, also a doctoral student, delivered her paper “Using Stufflebeam’s Context, Input, Process and Product (CIPP) Evaluation Approach to Guide Self-Study Evaluation Processes.” Doctoral student Jill W. Bloss presented her paper, “High School Predictors of Performance in a Physical Therapy Program,” as one of a multipaper session on the evaluation of special student populations.