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The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Ensuring children's smooth transition from early education programs to kindergarten requires that attention be paid to the resources and linkages among schools, child care and early education services, and families. In this Q+A, Robert Pianta, professor of Clinical and School Psychology at the University of Virginia, shares his recent research on children's transitions and gives tips on how to support families during this time.
Using role-play with school staff, poor single mothers reveal school prejudices toward parents and catalyze changes in the conduct of parent meetings.
Free. Available online only.
In an elementary school in the rural south, parents, preservice teachers, and others come together to strengthen children's literacy and learn from their experiences with children and one another.
Free. Available online only.
Latina teachers' literacy practices are shaped in part by the literacy activities the teachers' own families engaged in during their early school years.
Free. Available online only.
A preschool parenting and readiness program in Canada results in higher school readiness among program children and families, as well as family readiness among teachers.
Free. Available online only.
Latino parents share their perspectives on what teachers should know in order to teach children more effectively and emphasize that Latino parents care about their children's education.
Free. Available online only.
A classroom-based family involvement project in Cyprus offers multiple roles for parents in the classroom, and benefits students, parents, and the teacher.
Free. Available online only.
This brief offers an in-depth review of logic models and how to construct them. A logic model can be a powerful tool for illustrating a program's theory of change to program staff, partners, funders, and evaluators. Moreover, a completed logic model provides a point of reference against which progress towards achievement of desired outcomes can be measured on an ongoing basis, both through performance measurement and evaluation.
Free. Available online only.
This FINE Forum features the Jane Addams School for Democracy, a university-community partnership in which Hmong and Latino immigrants, professors, high school teachers, parents, and students all work together on public issues.
Free. Available online only.
The purpose of this module is to explore an understanding of how parents of learning disabled (LD) children make sense of their parenting experiences and the ways in which they might be better supported within school communities. Students will also become familiar with the principles of dialogue, a form of communication that values the multiple truths that parents and educators bring to discussions about a child's learning.
Free. Available online only.
This course will survey various models of community-based services that support students in schools. It will also cover implementation and evaluation of services.
Free. Available online only.
Class sessions introduce the student to communication techniques that are essential to parent-teacher collaboration. After essential skills are defined, the course reviews important options for parent-teacher involvement available within schools. The strategies for involvement are considered within the context of selected issues affecting public education. Finally, the content considers legal/ethical and professional issues surrounding involvement with parents.
Free. Available online only.
A collaboration with the Finance Project, this brief provides practitioners of local out-of-school time programs with techniques, tools, and strategies for improving their program and tracking their effectiveness over time.
Free. Available online only.
Professor of Public Administration, Joseph Wholey, explains that contrary to popular thought, it is possible to increase program equity without compromising program efficiency-through performance measurement and management systems.
Sara Watson of the Pew Charitable Trusts explains that a results accountability system must extend beyond the purely technical to also address the management of people.
Amy Coates Madsen describes how, by setting best practices for nonprofits, the Standards for Excellence program both helps nonprofits to improve and increases public confidence in them.
Sharon Edwards and Ira Cutler of Cornerstone Consulting Group explain how organizations can use reflective assessments to assess their progress and consider the choices ahead.
John Bare of the Knight Foundation shares his foundation's definition of the term “risk” when it comes to investing in initiatives, borrowing from the language of money managers.
Kim Sabo of Sabo Consulting and Dana Fusco from York College, CUNY illustrate how they conducted a participatory evaluation of an after school literacy initiative to support its continuous improvement.
Paul Light is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., an instructor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and author of 14 books, including most recently Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence. Previously he was Director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Philip Harris and Lori Grubstein of the Crime and Justice Research Center describe the “bottom-up” development of ProDES, an outcome-based information system that tracks youth in the juvenile justice system.
The following are excerpts from an evaluation panel at the conference, “Nurturing Strong Full Service Schools: Building Bridges with Communities,” that took place on May 20, 2002. It was the fifth in a series of national conferences about full service schools organized by Margot Welch and the Collaborative for Integrated School Services at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Panelists shared their evaluation findings and lessons learned.
The New & Noteworthy section features an annotated list of papers, organizations, initiatives, and other resources related to this issue's theme of Evaluation for Continuous Improvement.
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange examines the use of evaluation for continuous improvement. It incorporates advice from well-known experts, such as Paul Light, Rosalie Torres, and Joe Wholey, outlines innovative evaluation practices, and provides insights into the evaluations of a wide range of initiatives.
Free. 20 Pages.
Ann Dykman of MPR Associates illustrates that an organization's culture and mindset are important factors in the success of using evaluation for continuous improvement.