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All Publications & Resources |
Data Sharing Resources for Afterschool and Expanded Learning Programs and Systems
This resource highlights tools, publications, and reports that provide examples of promising practices for and guidance on data sharing for afterschool and expanded learning programs and systems.
Afterschool Evaluation 101: How to Evaluate an Expanded Learning Program
Afterschool Evaluation 101 is a how-to guide for conducting an evaluation. It is designed to help out-of-school time (OST) program directors who have little or no evaluation experience develop an evaluation strategy. The guide will walk you through the early planning stages, help you select the evaluation design and data collection methods that are best suited to your program, and help you analyze the data and present the results.
Webinar Archive—OST Data and Evaluation: Collecting and Sharing Data to Support Communities
This presentation examines the “essential data” that OST providers and intermediaries should consider collecting for an evaluation, and the important role families can play throughout the process.
Grantmaking to School Districts: Lessons for Foundations
This brief offers lessons and best practices from foundations across the country on grantmaking to school districts. It offers advice to foundations that are considering school district investments for the first time. It also offers a useful "check" to more experienced foundations that want to examine their thinking and approaches against the lessons and practices of other foundations.
Current Issue - Scaling Impact
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange explores the promising practices and challenges associated with taking an enterprise to scale, along with the role that evaluation can and should play in that process. It is the second in our “hard-to-measure” series, which we inaugurated with our Spring 2007 issue on evaluating advocacy.
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies, a tool from Harvard Family Research Project, guides school districts to create a logic model that can aid in planning, implementing, assessing, and communicating about their systemic family engagement efforts.
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning was developed for advocates, evaluators, and funders who want guidance on how to evaluate advocacy and policy change efforts. This tool takes users through four basic steps that generate the core elements of an advocacy evaluation plan, including what will be measured and how.
Preschool for California’s Children: Summary of 2003-2008 Evaluation Findings
This brief summarizes Harvard Family Research Project's evaluation findings about the Preschool for California's Children grantmaking program at its 5-year midpoint.
Research Update 3: Highlights From the Out-of-School Time Database
This publication explores how out-of-school time programs use evaluation to inform their programming and serve older youth and their families.
Measurement Tools for Evaluating Out-of-School Time Programs: An Evaluation Resource
This Snapshot describes instruments used by current out-of-school time programs to evaluate their implementation and outcomes.
Building the Future of Family Involvement
This double issue of The Evaluation Exchange examines the current state of and future directions for the family involvement field in research, policy, and practice. Featuring innovative initiatives, new evaluation approaches and findings, and interviews with field leaders, the issue is designed to spark conversation about where the field is today and where it needs to go in the future.
After School Programs in the 21st Century: Their Potential and What it Takes to Achieve It
This research brief draws on seminal research and evaluation studies to address two primary questions: (a) Does participation in after school programs make a difference, and, if so (b) what conditions appear to be necessary to achieve positive results? The brief concludes with a set of questions to spur conversation about the evolving role of after school in efforts to expand time and opportunities for children and youth in the 21st century.
Case Study of the First Year of Sports4Kids at the Ohrenberger Elementary School in Boston, Massachusetts: 2006-2007 School Year
Harvard Family Research Project completed a a case study evaluation of Sports4Kids, a school-based program that that provides opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play at elementary schools. This study examined one program site in Boston, to provide data to test whether Sports4Kids was implemented as planned and achieved its intended outcomes. Data were collected through a variety of instruments, including observations, interviews, and surveys and from a variety of sources, including from teachers, the principal, students, and the program site coordinator.
Research Update 2: Highlights from the OST Database
Synthesizes findings from the profiles of 13 research and evaluation reports added to the OST Program Research and Evaluation Database in August 2007.
Building Villages to Raise Our Children: Six Volume Set
This set of six volumes offers practical advice for establishing and managing a family support program.
Research Update 1: Highlights from the OST Database
This Research Update synthesizes findings from the profiles of 15 research and evaluation reports added to the Out-of-School Time Program Research and Evaluation Database in December 2006. It highlights strategies for assessing program processes as well as key outcomes and features of programs that promote positive outcomes.
Family Involvement Interventions: Shining the Spotlight on Evaluation (Symposium)
This panel symposium, held at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Chicago on April 10, 2007, followed up on HFRP's family involvement sessions at previous AERA meetings in 2005 and 2006. The 2007 symposium featured discussion regarding the evaluation of family involvement interventions
Advocacy and Policy Change
This 32-page issue of The Evaluation Exchange describes new developments in evaluating advocacy and policy change efforts that attempt to inform or influence public policy at the local, state, or federal levels.
Lessons From Family-Strengthening Interventions: Learning From Evidence-Based Practice
Examine how effective family-strengthening interventions can positively impact families and children in this practitioner-friendly brief from Harvard Family Research Project. Lessons From Family-Strengthening Interventions: Learning From Evidence-Based Practice is based on our review of interventions that have been rigorously evaluated through experimental and quasi-experimental studies. We offer educators, service providers, and evaluators recommendations for creating successful programs and evaluations.
Summer Success: Challenges and Strategies in Creating Quality Academically Focused Summer Programs
This brief looks at evaluations of 34 academically focused summer programs in order to distill challenges and compile promising strategies for creating quality summer programs.
Building and Evaluating Out-of-School Time Connections
This double issue of The Evaluation Exchange focuses on creating and evaluating connections between out-of-school time (OST) programs and the other settings in which children and youth live, learn, and play.
Learning from Small-Scale Experimental Evaluations of After School Programs
This Snapshot reviews small-scale experimental evaluations of after school programs, highlighting these studies' evaluation strategies and results.
Professional Development
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange focuses on evaluating professional development across a range of fields, including after school and youth development, education, child care, and child welfare. The issue features innovative methods in professional development, conceptual frameworks and practical tools for evaluating professional development, links between professional development and program quality, and the role of organizational contexts in supporting professional development and positive outcomes. Included in the issue is a Questions & Answers feature with Thomas Guskey, who describes his five-level model for evaluating professional development.
Family Strengthening Interventions: Evidence-Based Practices
The purpose of this class is to provide professional skills that will help students to select, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of evidence-based family strengthening interventions. Students will increase their knowledge, skills, and expertise in the most up-to-date information on effective family strengthening interventions in their area of primary interest.
Focus on Families! How to Build and Support Family-Centered Practices in After School
This comprehensive, easy-to-read guide to understanding how to engage families in after school programs is a critical resource for after school providers looking to create or expand an existing family engagement program. It offers a research base for why family engagement matters, concrete program strategies for engaging families, case studies of promising family engagement efforts, and an evaluation tool for improving family engagement practices.