PP Presentation

Program Evaluations: Introductions and

Definitions

Michelle Ellis, MA

My name is Michelle Ellis and I am a teacher and Department Chair of the Bear Creek High School, English is a

Second Language Department. I have been teaching for 10 years, first of all teaching biology for five-and-a-half

years and most recently I have been the Department Chair in ESL for the last four.

My official title is ESL Teacher and Department Chair at Bear Creek and I am the district representative for my

school along with my colleague Mike Flores. We both serve as liaisons between the district multicultural student

services and our school Bear Creek, and work closely with the district folks as well as all of the teachers at Bear

Creek High School, especially content area teachers who are affected by having our ESL students in their classes.

The number one part of my job as far as evaluation, is to see how well our curriculum aligns with the Curriculum

Alignment Project, which is Jefferson County Public schools' attempt to be Colorado standards-based and evaluate

how well our ELL, English Language Learners, are performing and assimilating with the rest of the student

population based on the CSAP and CELA test scores, and CSAT being the Colorado State Assessment Program that

all ninth- and 10th-graders are required to take as well as the CELA test which is the Colorado English Language

Assessment.

Both of these tests are taken by our ELLs just to see if they are indeed learning the English language and becoming

academically proficient with the rest of the student body. As far as my evaluation role, evaluating our program, we

take daily informal assessments. Mike and I both as teachers, are constantly doing on-going assessments to make

sure that our students are learning the English language, as well as after the students take the CELA test and the

CSAT test, we look at their results and compare them with the mainstream body of ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th

graders to see how they are growing in the English language and we make changes to our programs based on these

results that we see.

All of my decisions on what I am going to teach are informed by the data that I look at. Our school is very data-

driven and we use a lot of percentages and cross-curricular data comparisons to make sure that every content area is

assessing based on standards and also assessing together.

We have a really cool program at Bear Creek High school as well as in many other Jefferson County High Schools

called collaborative content team. Richter Thor (ph) was sort of the father of this idea, and the whole program is

based on difference, discipline, meeting together on a weekly basis preferably to make sure that all of the

assessments and instructions are aligned, so that hopefully all teachers are teaching the same material to all kids.

And I am proud to say that over the last four years all of my English Language Learners have been participating in

the Bear Creek High School English program, doing all of the same assessments and learning all of the same

material that all of our incoming ninth graders are required to learn, and that is a big step for someone from another

country, English is not their first language. So it is pretty amazing that they are able to access the same material, it

just has to scaffolded or taught in a little bit different way.

Nathan Long, EdD

My name is Nathan Long. I am an Academic Dean for a small college in the Midwest here in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am

an academic dean for general education and instructional support services. My main roles at the institution include

serving as a chief academic officer, the chief information officer—specifically for technology, supervision of liberal

arts and sciences faculty, as well as academic services support staff.

I got involved in Program Evaluation by the nature of my job, by virtue of my role in assessment of student learning

and instructional as well as technological services programs. Program Evaluation was just a natural outgrowth of

what I do day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year. Currently, we are engaged in a number of

Program Evaluation activities rooted in assessment of student learning and programmatic effectiveness.

Robert Wang, PhD

My name is Rob Wang, and I am serving as an Associate Professor of Science at Colorado Mountain College, in

Glenwood Springs, Colorado, which is located about midway between Aspen and Vail. As far as my role within

Colorado Mountain College, my primary role is teaching. I teach Environmental Science, and Outdoor Education.

I am also involved in program development specifically the development, I have been in Environmental Science and

Environmental Studies Program. And probably, the most important thing, or relevant thing as far as, Program

Evaluation I also serve as a principal investigator for projects related to Native American and Alaska Native Science

Education.

This work basically involves tribes from Alaska and then down through the Rocky Mountain Corridor from

Montana to Arizona. Primarily, it is funded through the National Science Foundation, but many of these projects are

also funded through organizations such as BIA and private foundations such as the Gates foundation.

As far as how I initially was exposed to or got involved with Program Evaluation, initially, I learned about it as a

grad student, when I was a doctoral student. And I always told myself I will never use this stuff, and it turns out that

it actually—it is very helpful to set a foundation for the work that I would do later on with grants.

As far as grant work in Program Evaluation, almost all the projects I am involved with emphasize a strong

evaluation component that is required by the grant, usually this is throughout the life of the projects both the

formative and summative assessments have to be completed. This helps to assess project goals, fine-tune the project,

and ultimately disseminate results whether or not the project goals were met.

Credits

Subject Matter Expert:

Heather Miller

Interactive Design:

Marc Ashmore

Instructional Design:

Nicole Hettwer

Project Management:

Erin Coffey Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License