Large-scale assessment for accountability has become an inherent part of educational reform over ... more Large-scale assessment for accountability has become an inherent part of educational reform over the last decade . Although Canadian educational reform adheres to this global trend, I argue it has a unique approach that is not reflected in the current literature.
Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, Jan 1, 2006
Needs assessments are typically conducted exclusively by practitioners at the cost of quality or ... more Needs assessments are typically conducted exclusively by practitioners at the cost of quality or entirely by external evaluators at the cost of relevance. This article makes a case for participatory needs assessment, which we defi ne as a systematic approach to setting organizational priorities in which trained evaluators and program stakeholders share responsibility for all substantive and procedural decisions. We outline potential advantages and three critical challenges: enlisting genuine participation by program staff, reducing time demands on stakeholders, and maintaining evaluation quality. We conducted a case study in which 81 stakeholders worked with an external evaluator to identify and prioritize needs in one school district. The district developed nine strategies for dealing with the challenges of participatory needs assessment. The result was a needs assessment that reached relatively high levels of utilization (support for discrete decisions, conceptual use, and process use) and moderately high levels of quality, particularly with regard to credibility with users. We argue that participatory needs assessment is an appropriate extension of participatory approaches to program evaluation.
The intention of Performance-Based Accountability (PBA) policies is to foster school changes to e... more The intention of Performance-Based Accountability (PBA) policies is to foster school changes to enhance student learning and success. The influence of variation in these approaches, however, has not been empirically determined. This article employs a new conceptual framework to describe PBA models and compare them across contexts. We conducted a comparative analysis, finding three kinds of PBA models exist in Canada. In this article, we consider the policy-level contextual differences coordinating large-scale, provincial, student testing and the use of results, using Canada as an example.
Large-scale assessment for accountability has become an inherent part of educational reform over ... more Large-scale assessment for accountability has become an inherent part of educational reform over the last decade . Although Canadian educational reform adheres to this global trend, I argue it has a unique approach that is not reflected in the current literature.
Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, Jan 1, 2006
Needs assessments are typically conducted exclusively by practitioners at the cost of quality or ... more Needs assessments are typically conducted exclusively by practitioners at the cost of quality or entirely by external evaluators at the cost of relevance. This article makes a case for participatory needs assessment, which we defi ne as a systematic approach to setting organizational priorities in which trained evaluators and program stakeholders share responsibility for all substantive and procedural decisions. We outline potential advantages and three critical challenges: enlisting genuine participation by program staff, reducing time demands on stakeholders, and maintaining evaluation quality. We conducted a case study in which 81 stakeholders worked with an external evaluator to identify and prioritize needs in one school district. The district developed nine strategies for dealing with the challenges of participatory needs assessment. The result was a needs assessment that reached relatively high levels of utilization (support for discrete decisions, conceptual use, and process use) and moderately high levels of quality, particularly with regard to credibility with users. We argue that participatory needs assessment is an appropriate extension of participatory approaches to program evaluation.
The intention of Performance-Based Accountability (PBA) policies is to foster school changes to e... more The intention of Performance-Based Accountability (PBA) policies is to foster school changes to enhance student learning and success. The influence of variation in these approaches, however, has not been empirically determined. This article employs a new conceptual framework to describe PBA models and compare them across contexts. We conducted a comparative analysis, finding three kinds of PBA models exist in Canada. In this article, we consider the policy-level contextual differences coordinating large-scale, provincial, student testing and the use of results, using Canada as an example.
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