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The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University Education Management Corporation
The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University Data Collection and
° Michigan
Public
° Connecticut
Charter
° Michigan
Public School
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Capabilities and Related Experiences of the Evaluation Team
The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University is an internationally known research and development center that provides leadership for advancing the theory and practice of evaluation as applied to education and human services. The Center's activities include (1) state-of-the-art research to study current evaluation practices and to formulate and test theoretical propositions about evaluation; (2) development to produce data-gathering instruments, reporting formats, and evaluation procedures; (3) dissemination to inform interested persons about relevant evaluation issues and the Center's contributions; (4) service to help a selected group of clients--including school districts, nonprofit agencies, government agencies, foundations, and colleges--to evaluate their programs; (5) instruction to provide evaluation training to students at Western and other interested parties; and (6) leadership to help develop evaluation as a field of professional practice. The Center, which is in the division of research at WMU, was originally founded at Ohio State University in 1963 and moved to WMU in 1973. Dr. Daniel Stufflebeam has continuously served as its director. Evaluation Center personnel, keeping with the Center’s mission to advance the theory and practice of evaluation, are highly skilled professionals who are dedicated to providing sound, useful, and efficient evaluation services. The coming sections provide further information about The Evaluation Center, staff, and affiliated consultants who will work on this evaluation, related experience, evaluation resources, and data collection and management capabilities. Over the past two years, The Evaluation Center has been an active observer
and learner in the area of charter schools. Two of the evaluation
team members, Dr. Jerry Horn and Dr. Gary Miron have been engaged
in studies related to the development and operation of charter schools.
The Center is particularly interested in working on projects that have
potential for major impact on educational practice and for which evaluation
is seen as a viable tool for improvement and accountability.
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Research Staff Skills The Center is particularly strong in the areas of educational program evaluation and personnel evaluation. Members of the staff are prolific writers about the theory and practice of evaluation, and they are sought after for their services and to lecture internationally on their area of specialty, most recently in the Philippines, Malaysia, Spain, and Taiwan. They have served in a variety of university, state, and national leadership roles; have had many journal articles, monographs, books, and chapters published; and have participated in evaluation work in over 20 countries outside the United States. As appropriate, the Center engages consultants and collaborators on
a worldwide basis as their expertise is needed. Over the years, this
has included such persons as Carl Candoli, Joy Frechtling, Gene Glass,
John Hattie, Edward Iwanicki, Richard Jaeger, Jason Millman, Rita O’Sullivan,
William Sanders, Michael Scriven, Anthony Shinkfield, James Stronge, William
Webster, and Patricia Wheeler, among many others.
[top] Data Collection and Management Capabilities The Evaluation Center is located at WMU in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It occupies about 9,000 square feet of office, library, data processing, and conference space. Generally, the Center has 20-30 employees at one time, with a consistent core of senior researchers. The Center is home to the national Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. The Evaluation Center is equipped with the latest and most effective
statistical, database, and word processing packages and also has access
to the University’s computing resources. The Center maintains, in
house, the equipment (NCS Opscan 5) and expertise for scanning large
data sets. The Center also utilizes the Survey Tracker Plus package.
This survey management software facilitates the production and distribution
of surveys via mail-based paper surveys as well as e-mail and web-based
surveys. The software package allows for data entry from computer
scannable forms and manual data entry as well as electronic forms.
The various sources of data are automatically integrated into the same
database. The Center’s support staff provides word processing, editing,
clerical, accounting, and data encoding/processing services. Center
staff are experienced and adept at managing multiple, large-scale projects.
[top] Evaluation Center staff have been involved in developing and evaluating numerous evaluation systems at the local, state, and national levels. The Center has provided evaluation services to a number of state departments of education, including Michigan, Hawaii, Alaska, Ohio, Texas, and Kentucky, as well as the U.S. Department of Education. From 1991-96, the federally funded research and development Center for Research on Educational Accountability and Teacher Evaluation (CREATE) was operated by The Evaluation Center. From that effort, a new professional organization, the Consortium for Research on Educational Accountability and Teacher Evaluation (CREATE) was formed to continue the work of the R & D Center; it will conduct the 9th annual National Evaluation Institute in Traverse City, Michigan, in July 1999. The Evaluation Center has a long history of providing the types of services
relevant to this project. The first three projects described deal
directly with charter schools. Each of the other selected projects
demonstrates the capability of The Evaluation Center to conduct the activities
detailed in the proposal.
Michigan Public School Academies (Charter Schools) of Michigan (1996-1997). The Center was contracted to develop an evaluation plan for the charter schools that took into account the needs and concerns of the state of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Education, the charter schools, and the communities involved. Site visits to the individual charter schools and the use of focus groups with the various stakeholder groups were an important part of this work. Connecticut Charter School Evaluation. The Evaluation Center is evaluating individual charter schools and the charter school initiative in Connecticut for the Connecticut Department of Education (CDE). The charter school legislation in Connecticut was “in direct response to the perceived need to provide alternative and diverse educational programs for the ultimate goal of improving student academic achievement.” The Center is conducting the evaluation over 4.5 years by assisting each charter school to identify indicators unique to its specific goals and mission; providing technical assistance to the charter schools in developing a system for annually collecting and reporting data pertinent to their local evaluation model; and serving as a resource for measurement, evaluation, and decision-making issues. The bulk of the work, including technical assistance is provided during the first 2 years of the project. Because new, innovative programs (e.g., charter schools) are of considerable interest to the public, these programs/schools are often bombarded with requests for information and to serve as subjects for a variety of studies. Center staff are making every effort to use existing data. Both quantitative and qualitative data are being collected through surveys; interviews; document review; focus groups; direct observation; case studies; and review of work samples and portfolios. The Program Evaluation Standards (Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, 1994) are being followed in the conduct and operations of this study. A web site has been developed for posting technical assistance bulletins, updates about the project, and facilitating communication with all stakeholders. Annual reports are submitted that contain results to date. An annual report has been prepared and posted on the web site. Subsequent reports and the final report will also be prepared for web publishing after approval from CSDE.. Michigan Public School Academy/Charter School Evaluation (9/1/97–12/23/98). Michigan has played a leadership role in shaping the legislation and developing the infrastructure for the development of charter schools. The Evaluation Center was one of two contractors selected to conduct independent evaluations of the charter school initiative in Michigan. The design work for this evaluation was performed by The Evaluation Center under an earlier contract with the Michigan Department of Education. The purpose of this evaluation is to determine if charter schools are fulfilling their missions. More than 51 charter schools are being visited, and the effectiveness of the authorizing process, the role of private service providers in the schools, the role of the Department of Education, and the schools’ impact on their communities are being studied. Information was collected through document reviews; direct observation; interviews; surveys; focus group meetings; reviews of student work samples; test scores; and reviews of diaries, logs, and portfolios, if available. The services of part-time Traveling Observers (TO) participate directly in the collection of information from identified sources, provide on-site assistance and consultation to the schools regarding the collection of data, and act as the “eyes and ears” of the core evaluation team. The TO concept has been used extensively by The Evaluation Center on a variety of projects. Results from the project will provide the legislature with information to determine if the charter school movement is meeting its statutory objectives. Charter schools will receive guidance regarding effective processes being used in other charter schools, and students and parents will learn about how well their charter school is doing relative to other charter schools and traditional public schools. In addition to these projects conducted by The Evaluation Center, a
description of two related project is included below. These studies
were led by Gary Miron, proposed project director, while working at Stockholm
University.
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Restructuring of Education in Europe. This study examined changes taking place in national education systems in Europe due to political, economic, and social forces, as well as the increasing role of the European Union. Four countries were studied in depth. The study included document and literature review, interviews of policy makers, analysis of national data sets, and case studies of four countries. The countries that were studied in depth were the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. Choice and the Use of Market Forces in Schooling. An investigation was conducted for the National Agency for Education on the reforms in Sweden dealing with decentralization, choice, and the use of market forces as a means to restructure the education system (1992/93). The study involved document and literature review, interviews of policymakers and school directors, site visits to independent schools that received public money in the form of vouchers, and the establishment and analysis of a database with descriptive and statistical indicators on the enrollments and costs of independent schools. |
| Education Management Corporation | Education
Management Corporation
Education Management Corporation(EMC) was established in 1989 and is incorporated under the laws of the state of New Jersey. EMC is a small, minority, woman-owned corporation certified in SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) 8744 and certified by the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and the city of Philadelphia as a “Minority Business Enterprise/Woman’s Business Enterprise DBE.” The principals of the company, Mrs. Valaida W. Randolph and Mr. A.A. Androlewicz, possess a combination of over 60 years of experience in working with agencies on the municipal, state, federal, and international levels. Much of their experience was acquired while working for two Fortune 500 companies with responsibilities for the overall management of the Education Services Division. The EMC team is dedicated to serving “at-risk youth” and adults and in assisting our nation in molding the work force of tomorrow. EMC has a strong track record in education. Its management of Job Corps centers across the country and its experience in operating alternative education programs in correction institutions demonstrates the company's superior qualifications. As a small minority/woman-owned business, EMC is constantly looking at diversifying within the education field. The opportunity to be associated with Western Michigan University in this type of study presents an opportunity for EMC to utilize its skill base and expand its business base. [top] |
| Capability
EMC is a professional and education technical services company that provides the following types of service to Job Corps operators and youth correctional programs: assessments of center operations, staff training, research and proposal development, curriculum development, workshop coordination, center operating procedures development, operation of academic and/or vocational training units, operation of correctional schools, and management planning. With a commitment to nurturing, empowering, and enhancing the skills of today’s at-risk youth so that they may become productive, tax-paying citizens of tomorrow, the staff selected to represent EMC are highly skilled and qualified in ensuring the corporation meets its goals. EMC has more than 50 professional staff. In addition to the Job Corps, the EMC staff have been involved in the development and operations of other types of educational programs. [top]°Job Training Partnership Act: While employed by a Fortune 500 corporation, key EMC staff members developed and operated major JTPA Programs in Oregon, California, New Jersey, and New York. These programs dealt with youth and adults in vocational training, placement, and adult math and literacy. [top]° Youth Corrections. The experience of the EMC staff in this phase of education is almost as great as its experience in Job Corps. The programs they operated were Rhode Island Youth Intensive Care Center, Weaversville Intensive Care Unit in Pennsylvania, and the Bensalem School at the Bensalem Youth Development Center, Bensalem, Pennsylvania. These programs served emotionally disturbed and adjudicated youth. Services rendered included residential, counseling, education and training and facilities management. EMC also operated the education unit of the Bensalem youth corrections facility from 1989-1994. [top]° U.S. Army Basic Education. The staff were responsible for the development of new basic reading and math curriculum for the Army as well as redesigning Army manuals at a more appropriate reading level. [top]° International Programs. As a result of their experience in Job Corps and other domestic education programs, EMC staff members also became involved in the development of international education programs in six different countries: Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Jamaica, Haiti, and Belize. They provided services in curriculum development, identification and acquisition of vocational equipment, setting up schools patterned the after Job Corps, and arranging for fellowship training of government officials, teachers, and program operators in the United States. [top] EMC received the Directors Appreciation Award in October 1990 from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Minority Business Development Agency for Distinguished Achievement and Performance. The award was presented by Secretary of Commerce, Robert A. Masbacher, and Director of the MBDA, Kenneth E. Bolton, in Washington, DC, during the National Celebration of the Minority Enterprise Development Week conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration. EMC was honored in October 1990 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Mayor Wilson Goode and Mr. Alfonzo Jackson, Regional Director, MBDA, during the Philadelphia Minority Enterprise Week. In June 1990 EMC was recognized by the Minority Business Development Agency, U.S. Department of Commerce, as an outstanding minority firm. |
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The Evaluation Center • Western
Michigan University • Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5237
Phone: (616) 387-5895 • Fax: (616) 387-5923