Hello! I’m Sheila Robinson Kohn from Greece Central School District and University of Rochester in NY and program chair for the PreK-12 Educational Evaluation TIG. Welcome to our 2nd annual sponsored AEA365 week, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week!
Here is our TIG’s mission, vision, and values in abbreviated form; please visit our website for the complete version, along with additional information about our TIG.
Mission: Raise the quality of educational evaluation.
Vision: Foster a close community of educational evaluators, become more responsive to context in education, and maintain high standards for educational evaluation practice.
Values: Relevant, responsive, high quality educational evaluation that reflects our beliefs in social justice, equity, and educating the whole child.
We asked our TIG members to identify important topics in educational evaluation and this week’s posts will reflect several of those topics.
Today, I’ll begin our week by sharing a Rad Resource for educational evaluators, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) website. IES is “the nation’s engine for education research, evaluation, assessment, development and statistics” and offers a virtual treasure trove of resources of interest to education evaluators. IES is comprised of four centers, each featuring many programs:
- National Center for Education Evaluation (NCEE)
- National Center for Education Research (NCER)
- National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
- National Center for Special Ed Research (NCSER)
Here’s a sample of what this multi-faceted site offers:
- National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Data Explorer (NDE) – create tables, charts, and maps to help answer your questions; look at decades of assessment results.
- National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Tables and Figures – locate tables/figures/charts published in the NCES’ National Education Data Resource Center (NEDRC); search thousands of tables, graphs, and figures from 1990-2012.
- Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) – search this digital library of education research and information; find bibliographic records of literature from 1966-2012.
- What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) – find high quality evidence-based interventions (educational program practices, or policies) that address 6 different outcome domains. (See Scott Cody’s May 10, 2010 AEA365 post for more info on the WWC.)
IES also offers a host of funding opportunities for educational researchers and evaluators.
Lesson Learned: Type “evaluation” into the search box on the IES home page, you may get as I did, “about 7260” results! That’s enough to keep any evaluator busy for awhile!
Hot Tip: Subscribe to “NewsFlash” IES’ email-based alert service. Select to receive only the specific information you choose to receive from IES, its four centers, and their programs.
Hot HOT Tip: Join us for our PK12 Educational Evaluation TIG Business Meeting in Minneapolis at AEA 2012 to learn more and get involved!
Hot Tip: Take a minute and thank a teacher this week!
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Educational Evaluation Week with our colleagues in the PreK-12 Educational Evaluation AEA Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our EdEval TIG members. 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.