Principles and Practices for Federal Program Evaluation Proceedings of a Workshop (2017) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Evolution of Federal Evaluation
2 The Evolution of Federal Evaluation
Pages 7-14
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From page 7... ...
Several of the agencies' documents prescribe the core principles of rigor, relevance, transparency, independence, and ethics, which she explained would be focal points of the workshop discussion. FEDERAL EVALUATION, WITH THICK SKIN Steering committee chair Grover "Russ" Whitehurst stressed how essential it is for the federal government to have a strong evaluation effort, marked by rigor and independence, enabling agencies to provide accurate 1 Fundamental Responsibilities of Federal Statistical Agencies and Recognized Statistical Units.
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From page 8... ...
In 2005, a randomized controlled trial conducted on the 21st Century Community Learning Centers After School Program found that the program did not improve participants' academic skills and actually increased their misbehavior, e.g., being suspended from school. This news came much to the chagrin of then-Senator Arlen Specter, then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a host of other program grantors, community members, and advocates.
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From page 9... ...
He noted three challenges and discussed how they have evolved over time: resources for research and evaluation, resistance to rigorous evaluation, and convincing policy makers to use evaluation results. In terms of resources, Orr said that in the 1970s, when he was director of the Office of Income Security Policy Research, then a part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy and Evaluation (ASPE)
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From page 10... ...
She said many policy makers and others view evaluation as a way of determining whether or not a program works, when it is more about determining whether or not a program works better than something else. Grossman remembers wishing when she was the chief evaluation officer at the Department of Labor that there had been a safe way or space in which to conduct evaluations without the looming fear of defunding -- where the environment was centered more on continuous improvement.
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From page 11... ...
Thencandidate for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used strong community support and anecdotal evidence to justify his stance; to Haskins, however, any sentence akin to saying "Everybody knows this program works" is an enemy of evidence-based policy. 4 "The purpose of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA)
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From page 12... ...
Haskins said that the Brookings Institution will release results from the largest evaluation to date in 2018, which will include data from home visiting programs across the country and include findings on program implementation and impacts based on the multiple randomized controlled trials. Under this same legislation, the Office of Adolescent Health released 41 evaluations of local teenage pregnancy prevention programs in fall 2016, most of which were random assignment studies.
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From page 13... ...
First, she noted that human resource challenges and regulations within the federal government can make it difficult for evaluation offices to hire quality staff. Second, she noted the need for capacity at the level of senior leadership in program offices to understand scientific evidence and be able to identify its uses and limitations.
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From page 14... ...
Third, evaluation agencies should have access to funding that is adequate to carry out high-quality evaluations that are linked programmatically so as to produce knowledge that will be useful in the long term.
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