Who we are: Hello, my name is Barbara Howard, Chair of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. My colleagues, Katherine Tibbetts, Don Klinger, and Patricia McDivitt, serve on the Joint Committee, which is a consortium of seventeen professional organizations, including AEA. Katherine Tibbetts is our AEA representative. We want to share our work on the Joint Committee with you in a workshop at the AEA Annual Conference this November in Chicago.
Joint Committee Standards: Our mission is to research, develop, and disseminate standards, which can be used with confidence to guide sound evaluations of programs, students, and personnel in education. Our standards – The Program Evaluation Standards (3rd Ed.), the Personnel Evaluation Standards (2nd Ed.), and the new Classroom Assessment Standards – are the only educational standards certified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). These standards are compatible with guidelines, principles, and other standards issued by our member organizations such as AEA, primarily because these organizations have a seat at the table when the standards are reviewed and approved through a rigorous process. Many of you may have even reviewed our standards!
Hot (Helpful) Tips: Here is how our standards may be helpful. Let’s say you are in a district adopting a new teacher evaluation system. Have you considered things like developing a new policy? Have you carefully planned the training of all the evaluators? What about training all the teachers on what to expect? Do you know if the system will yield valid and reliable results? How will you use the results? Have you thought about confidentiality issues? The Personnel Evaluation Standards can help guide you and your district in developing or implementing a system that will give you the results you desire. On the other hand, whether you are an experienced or novice, independent or in-house program evaluator, The Program Evaluation Standards can guide you in a similar way by helping you to consider all the aspects of a project from the early planning stages to the final report. Our newest standards, Classroom Assessment Standards, guide classroom teachers in the intricate process of developing, selecting, and using assessments to inform their instruction and promote student learning. Regardless of your field or level of expertise, these standards can help you sharpen your skills into best practice. The tools and tips we plan to share highlight the standards even more!
Rad Resource: For more information about our standards and the Joint Committee, please visit our website www.jcsee.org
Want to learn more? Register for Applying the Joint Committee Standards for Exemplary Program, Classroom and Personnel Evaluations at Evaluation 2015 in Chicago, IL.
This week, we’re featuring posts by people who will be presenting Professional Development workshops at Evaluation 2015 in Chicago, IL. Click here for a complete listing of Professional Development workshops offered at Evaluation 2015. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.