TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY

Evaluation Design and Services

Grant Evaluation Inc. has extensive experience measuring the impact and effectiveness of Teaching American History grant initiatives. The research design developed has resulted in numerous successful grant awards and is continually refined and tailored to individual projects.

The Grant Evaluation Inc. Design Advantage –

• Experience: GEI has conducted impact and process evaluations of American History learning curricula and projects across the nation, surveying and analyzing data on thousands of teachers and students. Evaluations include: Teaching American History grant projects; Bill of Rights Institute curricula projects; statewide high school senior constitution survey; and, Italian American Heritage projects.

• National Database: GEI has a growing database that can provide broader comparison of data with other states and regions. ES also has collected results from numerous national surveys on American history knowledge levels. This analysis is in addition to the comparison groups already included in the local project.

• Proven Measurement Tools: GEI has tested survey measures targeted to accurately ascertain teacher and student knowledge gain, changes in classroom and student learning practices, and changes in history understanding, interest levels, opinion, and attitudes. The database includes hundreds of diverse measurement tools.

• Personal Service: GEI directly participates in your professional development sessions and works with grant instructors, teachers, and administrators to ensure that the final evaluation design, instruments, and implementation are custom fit to individual projects. This hands on approach ensures that evaluation instruments are aligned with actual practices as they take place.

• Multi-faceted Approach: GEI examines project impact through multiple lenses and takes a comprehensive view of results generated. Each professional development session is evaluated individually, allowing comparison with other sessions and with the overall annual impact on teacher knowledge and practices. Teacher and student perspectives are aligned and compared. Resource utilization and project products are also reviewed and contrasted.

• Technical Expertise: The GEI team includes a qualified statistician, a history professor, and a national evaluation research leader. Surveys are developed and read on professional Scantron equipment and sophisticated analytical techniques are applied as appropriate. The analysis allows for before and after comparison, comparison with teachers not in the project, and comparisons over time of the project teachers.

• Useful and User-Friendly Reports: GEI provides ongoing evaluation reports in a graphic and user friendly format. Project administrators and teams can adapt their program based upon evaluation results.

• Meeting Federal Evaluation Requirements: GEI helps prepare federal annual and final project evaluation reports to ensure that reporting requirements are met.

The experience of Grant Evaluation Inc. with American History learning, curricula and professional development projects, and the extensive evaluation resources that GEI has available result in a more efficient and effective evaluation for your project. GEI can provide more service for less due to this economy of scale and prior experience.