Program Evaluation

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NNPS tools and services assist schools and district & organization leaders to evaluate the quality and progress of schools’ programs of family and community involvement.

There are “built-in” evaluation tools in the NNPS manual (See Chapter 9 in School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action). These tools help schools plan their programs and assess the quality of their efforts, teamwork, programs, and practices.

NNPS provides annual UPDATE surveys to help leaders of partnerships monitor progress from year to year.

NNPS also offers general questionnaires for parents, students, and teachers on their attitudes toward school, family, and community partnerships, current experiences, and expectations.

See Surveys and Summaries in the section Publications and Products.

The Handbook includes tools and guidelines to measure the development and quality of programs and practices of school, family, and community partnerships.

Schools begin with Starting Points, an inventory of present practices of family and community involvement. See Chapter 5 in the Handbook.

Then, the Measure of School, Family, and Community Partnerships may be used annually to assess progress in implementing activities for the six types of involvement. See Chapter 9 in the Handbook.

Annual Evaluation of Activities helps the Action Team for Partnerships assess the quality of each activity that is implemented. This tool should be used throughout the year, as each activity occurs. See Chapter 9 in the Handbook.

Annual Review of Team Processes helps schools assess how well the ATP is working together as a team. The review prompts discussions about the quality of interactions and needed improvements in the composition of the team, schedule and content of team meetings, effectiveness of committees, extent of shared leadership, and progress on program implementation. See Chapter 3 in the Handbook.

The “built-in” evaluations help a school’s Action Team for Partnerships document progress, discuss program strengths and weaknesses, and improve the next One-Year Action Plan for Partnerships.

District facilitators for partnerships should collect all schools’ One-Year Action Plans to keep track of schools’ plans and programs, and to help each school improve its work from year to year.

UPDATE SURVEYS

NNPS helps district and organization leaders assess progress in program development with easy-to-use UPDATE surveys. UPDATE includes scales and measures of eight “essential elements” that have been shown in NNPS research to contribute to improving the quality of partnership programs: leadership, teamwork, action plans, implementation, funding, collegial support, evaluation, and networking. UPDATE helps members of NNPS improve their partnership programs from year to year. Regions and district with large number of schools can contract with NNPS to process, analyze, and report school’s data. 

• See the “built in” evaluation forms in NNPS School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action.
• Read summaries of NNPS research in the section Research and Evaluation.
• If you have questions about evaluating the quality of partnership programs and the results of outreach to families for student success, contact: Dr. Joyce L. Epstein, Co-Director, NNPS, jepstein@jhu.edu or Dr. Steven B. Sheldon, Co-Director, NNPS, ssheldon@jhu.edu