This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
How can we improve evaluations used for special education programs?
Improving special education programs by improving program evaluations
Challenge
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has emphasized the use of evidence-based practices as well as research-driven accountability (RDA). This emphasis has become integral to OSEP’s assessment of its grant programs and of individual grantees.
For OSEP, Westat is providing the technical assistance that grantees and project officers need to ensure that program and project evaluations produce reliable, objective, and rigorous data that can be used to describe the projects’ achievements, help the projects improve, and demonstrate valid results.
Solution
We are providing the following assistance
- Developing evaluation-related tools and products—such as a tool to help projects demonstrate evidence of results, an evaluation toolkit, and guidelines for working with external evaluators—to help grantees and project officers better understand how to design and conduct high-quality evaluations
- Using webinars and conference presentations to share evaluation strategies and methods with grantees and project officers
- Offering an array of supports to help OSEP grantees with their evaluations
Results
OSEP grantees will be better able to
- Collect, report, analyze, and use high-quality data for project evaluations
- Design and conduct high-quality evaluations
OSEP project officers will be better able to
- Monitor the grantees’ progress and achievements
- Judge the effectiveness of their grant programs
Focus Areas
Education Educator Effectiveness Special EducationCapabilities
Evaluation and Mixed-Methods Research Innovative Data Collection and Management Tools Partnership Engagement Technical AssistanceTopics
Equity K-12 LearningSenior Expert Contact
Tom Fiore
Senior Advisor
-
Perspective
Teacher Apprenticeships Strengthen the WorkforceJuly 2024
Many state education agencies (SEAs) are addressing teacher shortages by creating and expanding alternative paths to the teaching profession. One fast-growing option is teacher apprenticeships,…
-
Expert Interview
Passport to Careers: Aiding Foster and Homeless Young AdultsJuly 2024
The Passport to Careers program in Washington State supports former foster youth and homeless youth unaccompanied by a parent or guardian in achieving their college…
-
Perspective
Highlights of Westat at AAPOR 2024May 2024
We’ve returned from the 79th Annual American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Conference, held May 15-17 in Atlanta, where we caught up with colleagues…