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Evaluation TeamTHE EVALUATION TEAM Gary Miron
Dr. Gary Miron, Project Director. Dr. Gary Miron, Principal Research Associate at The Evaluation Center, provides the leadership for the evaluation team and is responsible for conducting the project and fulfilling its operational and programmatic expectations. He assumes full responsibility for the required reports and serve as the primary liaison/point of contact for this project. Dr. Miron is serving as project director for the statewide evaluation of charter schools in Pennsylvania and for the secondary analysis of student achievement results from the Edison Schools Inc. He also served as project manager for the evaluation of charter schools and charter school initiatives in Michigan and Connecticut. He has been involved in the development of research instruments, data collection and analysis, report writing, and prepared web sites for these particular charter school evaluations. Additionally, he provided technical assistance for the charter schools in Connecticut in terms of helping them develop and implement accountability plans and self evaluations. Dr. Miron has a diverse background as a teacher and researcher. He worked as a public school teacher in Michigan in the mid-1980s and taught at the university level in China (one year) and for more than four years at Stockholm University in Sweden. Between 1987 and 1997, he was employed at the Institute of International Education, Stockholm University. Here he completed his doctoral degree and later worked as a staff researcher and as the Director of Studies. During the time he was employed at Stockholm University, he served as principal investigator for four international and two national research and evaluation projects dealing with education questions. Relevant to the current evaluation proposal, Dr. Miron planned and directed a study of school restructuring in Europe (1994-1997) and conducted an investigation for the Swedish National Agency for Education of reforms in Sweden concerning decentralization, choice, and the use of market forces as a means to restructure the education system (1992-1993). In addition to his research on school reforms, he was involved with starting a charter like "independent"; Montessori school in Sweden. This experience helped him understand the voucher reform in Sweden from the perspective of a school administrator. Dr. Miron's research and diverse international work experience have provided him with the opportunity to study and learn about educational systems and educational problems in several regions of the world. He has taught a number of research methods courses and is familiar with employing a broad range of research methods and techniques. He has researched and written on such topics as special needs education, educational evaluation, educational planning and policy, the strengthening of research capacity, multimethod research, restructuring of education, and school reform. He has authored or edited 7 books and has published a dozen articles or chapters in books. If requested, Dr. Miron will make presentations on the conduct and findings of this study to state board members, government officials, and other stakeholders and interested parties. Dr. Christopher Nelson, Project Manager. The project manager is Dr. Christopher Nelson, Senior Research Associate at The Evaluation Center. Nelson is also project manager for charter school evaluations in Pennsylvania and Cleveland and has contributed to evaluations of charter schools in Michigan and Connecticut. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Nelson has studied a number of policy reforms, including charter schools. He has participated in the development of region-wide and district-level accountability systems and systems designed to facilitate data-based decision making in charter and traditional public schools. Dr. Nelson has also studied the impact of changes in governance and regulatory structures on public organizations, work that he is in the process of extending to charter schools. This work will be very useful in assessing the impact of waivers from educational regulations on charter and traditional public schools. Finally, Dr. Nelson brings a knowledge of the dynamics of innovation diffusion in a variety of policy areas to the study of charter schools. This latter body of research will be particularly useful in assessing the conditions under which traditional public schools are likely to adopt and implement innovations developed in charter schools. Dr. Nelson brings a rich diversity of methodological skills to program evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative. As a qualitative researcher he has conducted focus groups, in-depth interviews, and has constructed policy histories in the evaluation of public programs. His experience with quantitative evaluation methods includes large and small survey samples, survey instrument design, the design and development of databases, coding of documents into quantitative indicators, and a variety of elementary and advanced statistical techniques. Moreover, he is particularly adept at blending qualitative and quantitative methods into evaluation designs that best address a given evaluation problem. If requested, Dr. Nelson will make presentations on the conduct and
findings of this study to state board members, government officials, and
other stakeholders and interested parties.
Dr. Chia-lin Hsieh, Project Analyst. Dr. Hsieh's experiences in higher education over the past 6 years have resulted in the development of a scholar with a diverse background as a teacher and researcher. She has worked as a private school music therapy teacher in Taipei, Taiwan, and taught music therapy courses at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan, in the mid-1990s. Dr. Hsieh is currently an adjunct instructor for the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership at Western Michigan University, where she teaches a graduate course on Fundamentals of Measurement and Evaluation in Education. In addition to her background in teaching, Dr. Hsieh is well trained in research methodology and data analysis and has extensive experience in management of large data sets, development of research instruments, collection and analysis of data, and report writing. Dr. Hsieh, who holds an M.A. and Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Western Michigan University, has demonstrated her research and scholarly abilities in the areas of education and educational reform through publications in professional journals and presentations at national conferences. Dr.Hsieh received special training in the use of NCES data in 1998 and completed a dissertation on school choice by analyzing the 1993 National Household Education Survey data. As a doctoral student, she collaborated on several research studies and publications and was awarded the All-University Graduate Research and Creative Scholar Award for 1999-2000. Dr. Hsieh is currently a senior research associate at the Western Michigan University Evaluation Center where she is a member of a team focused on evaluating school reform initiatives. Project professional staff (see above) are intimately involved in fieldwork and visit most of the schools themselves. However, the evaluation team also employs a number of additional field researchers. Current research assistants include Carla Howe, Jamie Helsen, Deborah Lehmann, and Kimberly Reynolds. Staff at The Evaluation Center provide a number of support services, including editing, clerical, accounting, and data entry. |