Microsoft Word Packard Teaching Case revised docx
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Weiss and Coffman both say that rather than serving in the traditional role of standing outside as
- Packard succeed in its goal of achieving universal preschool in California.
- Evaluation Informs the Direction of the Preschool Program
- The HFRP report concluded by recommending that the Packard Foundation adjust its 2013
Teaching Case: Evaluation of Preschool for California’s Children
27 Sunshine said, however, that he sensed a tension in the HFRP evaluators at times in straddling the roles of producing traditional, outcome data and helping with strategic learning.
“We want them to have a point of view and opinion,” he said. “It was hard. They saw themselves as evaluators. We would ask ‘what do you think?’ They were ambivalent about it. We didn’t hire them to do that. They were so good that they didn’t want to taint their work. But we have come to rely on their expertise and intelligence. They did it. [But] you could feel their ambivalence. I don’t think you can do both.” Playing the role of an embedded strategic advisor raises some questions about the boundaries of evaluators using this approach.
Reich said, “If evaluators hope to see their results help with strategic learning they need to be willing to see their clients less as clients and a bit more as partners. In evaluation for strategic learning, everyone has skin in the game. It puts evaluators in a more nebulous, less objective role. For people with rigorous evaluation training that can be an uncomfortable place to be.”
an impartial and distant evaluator, they were clear from the start that they wanted to help Packard succeed in its goal of achieving universal preschool in California.
“A lot of evaluators have a real problem with that kind of role.” Coffman notes. “[In this approach], you have to integrated and be part of the program team. When we started this evaluation, we said ‘we believe in universal PreK, we want you to succeed and we want to help you succeed.’”
“This is something I would say with enormous respect and gratitude,” Salisbury said. “The Harvard evaluators are the dream team. I think there is a question for all of us when you work this closely with evaluators. Does it compromise the evaluation? No one could have more integrity than our evaluators. [But] we all like each other. We are in love with this strategy and we feel like we’ve landed on something really big here. I don’t know what to do with that.”
Among the areas of progress cited in the HFRP report were:
• The number of preschool legislative champions had nearly doubled. Many of these champions were influential, such as Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg. • State education spending on three-‐ and four-‐year-‐olds had increased every year since 2003 with funding growing by $217 million. • In 2008, the legislature passed three important bills that Packard grantees informed. All were low-‐cost changes to improve the preschool system’s quality and efficiency.
Teaching Case: Evaluation of Preschool for California’s Children
28 • Packard target communities were implementing some of the highest quality preschool programs in the state.
Among the areas for improvement cited in the HFRP report were: • Business champions were lacking. Few high-‐profile business champions had emerged. • Divisions in the early care and education community needed to be addressed. When preschool is prioritized, many are concerned that infants and toddlers are being left behind. • Targeted community investments could link more effectively with state-‐level leadership to push for policy progress. • Preschool access had not increased substantially and would not without a major state-‐level policy change. • California fell short on preschool quality. 2008 Rand research, sponsored by Packard, found that preschool quality across the state was lacking and there was substantial room for improving preschool quality for all children. • The budget climate had reduced chances for near-‐term preschool investments. Almost three-‐fourths of 2008 bellwethers thought preschool increases were not likely in 3 years. • Support for a universal preschool policy had decreased. Only half of the 2008 bellwethers said they wanted a universal policy.
Several Packard staff said that HFRP’s midcourse evaluation report informed the direction of the preschool program. “The HFRP involvement came at a very pivotal time and really helped inform our thinking around the midcourse review. We ended up making a dramatic change,” Reich said. “We are not going to be about universal preschool. We would be about low-‐income kids first.”
In the long run, the CFC team felt that high-‐quality preschool for all three-‐ and four-‐year-‐olds remained one of the best ways, if not the best way, to ensure that all of California’s children entered kindergarten prepared to succeed in school and in life. The midcourse review did not lead staff to rethink this core belief. Rather, staff advocated for retaining high-‐quality universal preschool as a long-‐term aspirational goal.
However, as HFRP’s data indicated, the prospects did not look good for attaining universal preschool by 2013. The state budget outlook—and for that matter, the federal budget outlook—was bleak until at least 2011 and likely beyond. Perhaps even more importantly, the appetite for a universal program simply was not yet strong enough, either among policymakers or the public. The policy picture was brighter, however, for targeted preschool expansions and quality improvements that still fit with the longer-‐term aspiration goal but were more realistic in the existing timeframe.
Given these political and fiscal realities, staff recommended narrowing the 2013 goal for the preschool subprogram as follows: The Packard Foundation Preschool for California’s Children Yüklə 480,23 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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