Prek-12 Educational Evaluation

Hello! I’m Leigh M. Tolley, Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in the College of Education & Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Although I am not currently an evaluator by trade, evaluation is still a sizeable part of the work that I do. It is omnipresent in accreditation efforts and program reviews with my colleagues; preparing and supervising undergraduate preservice teachers; teaching courses to graduate-level students who are currently employed as educators; and supporting experienced teachers that are mentoring their preservice, novice, and seasoned peers.

Have you ever wanted to evaluate a large educational survey dataset but were stuck on which statistical software would be the best to use? Then this may be the blog post for you! My name is Kinsey Simone, and I am an instructor of Quantitative Research Methods and Educational Assessment at Tennessee Tech University. I am set to earn my PhD in Program Planning & Evaluation in August 2023 and have spent the past several weeks deep in analysis of a large educational dataset. I learned a few advantages and disadvantages for using some of the most popular software packages, including IBM SPSS, R Software, and AM software, which I am sharing with you.

Hello. My name is Mya Martin-Glenn. I’m the Webmaster for the PreK-12 Educational Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG) and have worked for the past 13 years in Aurora Public Schools in Aurora, the last 9 of which have been as the Assessment Director for the District. Lately, we have noticed the surveys our district administers have gotten low response rates. Additionally, we know that we have many evaluators and researchers who want to administer surveys in our district.

Hello! We are Mark Yu and Christina Lemon from McREL International. In our daily work as evaluator and practitioner, respectively, we aim to bridge boundaries between research and practice and expand ways communities can more effectively collaborate and promote equitable educational student outcomes. One strategy we employ in our work is knowledge brokering.

Hi! I am Maia Elkana, the evaluation director for the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis, where I direct program evaluation across research-practice partnerships between teachers and administrators, education and scientific researchers from the university, and community partners. 

Hi there! My name is Leigh M. Tolley, and I am an Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in the College of Education & Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. I am also Program Co-Coordinator, along with Dr. Peter Sheppard, Associate Dean of Research & Strategic Initiatives, and Mrs. Marlene Beard, Interim Director …

PreK-12 Ed Eval TIG Week: Actionable Feedback: From Teacher Mentoring to Educational Evaluation by Leigh M. Tolley Read More »

I am George Chitiyo, Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation at Tennessee Tech University. I work with teachers and other education professionals in assessing and evaluating instructional strategies, initiatives, and educational interventions and programs.

Hi! We are Keiko Kuji-Shikatani, Canadian Evaluation Society Fellow and Credentialed Evaluator, Wendy Rowe from the School of Leadership at Royal Roads University in Canada and Credentialed Evaluator, and Chi Yan Lam, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University and Credentialed Evaluator. Unimaginable violence against the children, youth and families of …

PreK-12 Ed Eval TIG Week: “Learning as We Go” in Surfacing the Real Stories and Harnessing our Potential as Blue Marble Evaluators by Keiko Kuji-Shikatani, Wendy Rowe, and Chi Yan Lam Read More »

Hello, everyone! My name is Leigh M. Tolley. I am a Member-at-Large for the PreK-12 Educational Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG), and have spent the past nine years as part of our TIG’s Program Chair and Chair teams. My interest in educational evaluation began when I was a high school English teacher and we had …

PreK-12 Ed Eval TIG Week: Remote Learning: Far from Remotely Interesting by Leigh M. Tolley Read More »

Hi! My name is Carrie Wiley. I’m a Senior Staff Scientist at the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) and would like to share some useful tips on manipulating strings in R. As educational evaluators, we often manage complex and messy datasets that we receive from schools, states, teachers, etc. One of the most common data …

PreK-12 Ed Eval TIG Week: Common String Manipulation Tasks with Educational Data in R by Carrie Wiley Read More »