eDUCATIONDESIGN Program Evaluation

Mayor's Youth Technology Corps
(2008)

Funder: National Science Foundation ITEST program (Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers)

In this partnership between the Detroit Public Schools, City of Detroit Department of Homeland Security, and Eastern Michigan University, high school students will develop geospatial visualization, analysis, and modeling skills learning GIS and other spatial analysis technologies as a strategy to increase the STEM skills in urban youth and guide them toward advanced science study and related career options.

Rock the Classroom, Los Angeles, CA
(2007)

Project website

Program evaluation of unique music-in-education program that connects popular music with standards-based literacy, taught by professional musicians as classroom teaching artists.

Music-in-Education National Consortium
(2003-2006)

In its third year, The Music-in-Education National Consortium (MIENC) represents a network of universities, arts organizations, school reform foundations, and partnering schools whose purpose is to bring about an evolution of music teaching and learning so that music can assume an essential role in higher education teacher preparation and public school reform. Lead partners include CAPE, Metropolitan Opera Guild, New England Conservatory, Northwestern University, A+ Schools, Georgia State University School of Music, and Florida Atlantic University’s School of Education. Consortium projects include convening working conferences on music-in-education issues for school districts, publishing the Journal for Learning through Music, developing new standards for Music in Education Guided Internships Programs, the development of a standardized MIE Electronic Portfolio Assessment System, the support of a growing professional development exchange program, and the evolution of a national Learning Laboratory School Network.

Program Evaluation is the core business of Education Design, LLC. With experience in arts education, math and science education, and educational technology, we are uniquely capable of examining and evaluating programs in these areas. Our rule of three:

1) develop instruments and methods together with the core project team, embedding evaluation as a component of project design

2) perform the data collection activities quickly and in manners and methods least likely to interrupt normal operations and activities

3) deliver the results and analysis formatively throughout the project allowing for constant course corrections of design and implementation

Our evaluation work is often part of larger funded projects seeking external evaluation.

Since 2004 many of our program evaluations have helped shape the evolving Active Implementation Development Evaluation (AIDE) model, where the evaluators regularly share all project findings with participants throughout the project’s timeline. Taking flexibility components of design research theory while adhering to a strict research methodology focuses the evaluation on formative “information updating” which helps all participants learn from one another while experiencing the project, not after. In the case of multiple site projects, the AIDE model capitalizes on the evaluator’s unique position as a visitor and observer of each site and the ability to cross-communicate learning incrementally from site to site, thus reshaping implementation and design as the project unfolds.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Connections for Literacy Program
(2004-2006)

Music education and arts integration program for fourth and fifth grades focusing on literacy and the arts in four urban school districts. Classroom teachers work with music teachers to develop language arts projects linked with music.

Boston Math Excellence Project
(2003-2005)

A three-year initiative to enhance mathematics performance in an urban high school, focusing on linking business and real-world applications to increase enrollment in advanced level high school mathematics classes.

WGBH Education Foundation
(2004)

Public Radio station WGBH’s Music and Words literacy project involves students from nine urban schools in a music-in-education literacy-based project. Students learn to produce original radio shows based on classroom work modeling integrated-arts curricula.

Earth System Science Education for the 21st Century
(2004-2006)

Earth System Science Education for the 21st Century (ESSE-21) is an effort to support new and diverse earth system science courses in 18 colleges and universities in the United States. Earth System Science focuses on teaching and learning separate areas of science (physics, chemistry, geology) within the context of the study of the earth and its history and scientific interactions. ESSE-21 is looking to support a growing interest in this kind of science education and science philosophy, particularly in minority-serving institutions.

Music Ventures in Schools Project
(2004-2005)

This one-year baseline study in a Vista, CA school employs high standards of data collection and analysis of the MusicVentures program, in terms of student/teacher interaction and attitude, and student work and achievement, as a result of music infused and music-integrated program interventions for Grades K-2.

Keeping Score
(2005)

Funder: James Irvine Foundation
Project website: www.keepingscore.org

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have developed Keeping Score: MTT on Music in order to offer today's audiences a connection to classical music via today's media. In this 5-year project with national reach for K12 schools, the Keeping Score (KS) Education Program will address an audience critical to the health of our society: classroom teachers across the country and, through them, a generation of students at risk of losing the benefits of early exposure to classical music.