Cross posted from the American Evaluation Association monthly newsletter from September 2017.
In September 2017, the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking proposed a bipartisan strategy – approved unanimously by the Members of the Commission – for improving the quantity and quality of evidence generated to support decision-makers in government. As the Commission published its strategy, a new initiative concurrently launched at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC, to promote implementation of the Commission’s recommendations in months and years to come. Serving as the Commission’s policy and research director and now as the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s new initiative, I’m excited about the enthusiasm in Washington for ensuring policymakers have access to relevant and useful information to guide their decisions. But we must carry this enthusiasm forward to action that can improve our field, the policies we study, and ultimately the lives of individuals in our communities.
Aligning Values with Action
The vast majority of my professional career in evaluation has focused on supporting the policies that enable evaluation to be generated and used in government. The Commission’s recommendations present a tremendous opportunity for the evaluation community. This is an opportunity to exhibit leadership and champion improvements in the availability of evidence, to ultimately improve how government’s policies and programs are designed and implemented.
As the conversation continues in coming months and years about how government can better generate and use evidence, the values articulated by AEA for evaluation are constructive guideposts. As AEA members, we value “excellence in evaluation practice” and “utilization of evaluation findings.” Each of these value statements can and should be embodied and encouraged by the policies that support evaluation in government. This is precisely the nature of my work.
An evaluation that doesn’t exist, can’t inform policymakers. I’m a proponent of recognizing and addressing the many institutional barriers to supply of evaluation. There are many barriers that exist today – laws, resources, will, leadership, organizational culture, political environment, program designs. The Commission’s report emphasizes three key barriers to generating evidence, including evaluation, in the United States: “unintentional limits on data access, inadequate privacy practices, and insufficient capacity to generate the amount of quality evidence needed to support policy decisions.” All of these barriers are solvable and can be transformed into enablers of evaluation.
The Opportunities Ahead
Changing expectations for senior leaders, planning for evaluation at the outset of a program or policy, and establishing appropriate incentives are all approaches to emphasize enabling evaluation in our institutions. How do we accomplish these approaches? The Commission specifically recommends that as we improve data access and privacy protections, capacity gaps can be partially addressed by establishing a Chief Evaluation Officer position within each Federal department and that learning agendas be developed to prioritize evaluation where the need is greatest. When implemented, these recommendations will help ensure that senior leaders are attuned to the needs of evaluation practice, supporting excellence, and that the capacity exists to encourage appropriate and responsible use of evaluation findings.
These recommendations aren’t impossible. The recommendations aren’t unrealistic. In fact, it’s just the opposite. They are on the horizon and likely to become the norm in coming years. But as we all seek to strengthen the evaluation field, improving our practice, and enabling the ability to make evidence available for decision-making, it’s important to remember that many of these changes will not happen overnight.
In my view, the Commission’s bipartisan recommendations mark a major milestone for our country for recognizing that government needs better information to guide policymaking, and that generating this evidence is really possible. I hope the evaluation community will join me in advocating for these improvements – consistent with our values – to seize the rare opportunity to vastly improve government’s capacity to support evaluation.
NICK HART, PH.D. is the Director of the Evidence-Based Policymaking Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center and the former Policy and Research Director for the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. He is the 2017 President of Washington Evaluators and a member of the American Evaluation Association’s Evaluation Policy Task Force.
Rarely does the topic of generating evidence to support government decision-making reach an audience outside the statistical, evaluation, and policy analysis communities. But today, the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking submitted its bipartisan set of recommendations -- supported unanimously by Members of the Commission -- igniting a discussion about how to do better.
In The Promise of Evidence-Based Policymaking, the Commission lays out a strategy for vastly improving the quantity and quality of evidence available in our country. The strategy seeks to overcome three prevailing challenges identified by the Commission: “unintentional limits on data access, inadequate privacy practices, and insufficient capacity to generate the amount of quality evidence needed to support policy decisions.”
I’ve had the great privilege of working with the Commission Members over the past year as their Policy and Research Director. But my personal involvement in the project should in no way minimize this message: in coming weeks, months, and years, these recommendations will set the tone for how our country goes about developing evidence to inform decisions in government for decades to come.
While the report of the Commission submitted to the President and Congress today addresses a range of issues and is not exclusively focused on the field of evaluation, there is no doubt that the recommendations could tremendously benefit the field if implemented. Take, for example, the Commission’s agreement with the American Evaluation Association that evaluation in government is too often “sporadic, applied inconsistently, and supported inadequately” (p. 26). One solution offered by the Commission is that departments in the Federal government should have Chief Evaluation Officers (see Recommendation 5-1). This alone is a strong statement about the value of and need for evaluation in our society.
But there’s much more. Chapter 2 of the Commission’s report highlights challenges and potential solutions to data access that can improve the evaluation community. Chapter 3 features improvements for privacy protections that go above and beyond approaches applied in much of government today. Chapter 4 offers a new solution to a long-standing issue about securely linked data together, including for evaluation. And Chapter 5 describes the basic capacity gaps in government today, along with strategies to vastly improve government’s coordination and infrastructure.
In my opinion, today marks a major milestone for our country in recognizing that government needs better information to guide policymaking, and that generating this evidence is really possible. I hope the evaluation community in Washington, D.C. will review, consider, discuss, and work to improve government’s capacity to better enable evaluation in support of evidence-based policymaking.
NICK HART, PH.D. is the President of Washington Evaluators in 2017 and served as the Policy and Research Director for the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. The views presented here are those of the author and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Government, including the Office of Management Budget and the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.
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In 1984, Lee Cronbach urged that "the evaluator is an educator; his success is to be judged by what others learn." [1] It's no coincidence that 1984 is also the year in which Washington Evaluators formed as one of the country's earliest professional evaluation societies committed to fostering continuous learning in our field.
Today, Washington Evaluators is committed to ensuring that our current cohort of professionals not only advocate to support the profession, but recruit future professionals into the field. Earlier this year, the Board of Washington Evaluators approved a new strategic plan that specifically identifies this as an objective for a goal to strengthen the evaluation community (see Objective 1.1).
To accomplish this objective the Washington Evaluators Board earlier this year established two new task forces to better address the needs of new professionals. First, we created a task force to develop a suite of recommendations for future consideration around improving the services available for new professionals.
Second, the Washington Evaluators Board established another task force led by Tamarah Moss from Howard University to design a new scholarship program for new professionals. This group's efforts resulted in the launch in August of the 2017 New Professionals Scholarship sponsored by Washington Evaluators. The new scholarship is intended to support new professionals in integrating evaluation practices and approaches within their respective organizations by encouraging participation in the American Evaluation Association's annual conference, as well as engagement over the next year with AEA and Washington Evaluators membership.
Through this new scholarship opportunity, Washington Evaluators hopes to strengthen the sustainability of the evaluation community, by recruiting and helping to educate the next generation of evaluators. The scholarship serves as one means to recruit new professionals into the evaluation community to facilitate continued diversity in the profession. It also ensures that those of us already engaged in the evaluation field can fulfill Cronbach's charge: to be educators and mentors to those who are new to the profession.
Learn more about the 2017 New Professional Scholarship here.
NICK HART, PH.D. is the President of Washington Evaluators in 2017. The views presented here are those of the author and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Government, including the Office of Management Budget and the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.
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References
[1] Cronbach, L., et al. 1984. Towards Reform of Program Evaluation. Washington: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
The U.S. government has a long and storied experience with producing and using program evaluation. As evaluators, we often like to believe our purpose is clear and necessary. In reality, we know that is not always the case.
The evaluation movement in the Federal government grew out of the War on Poverty initiatives in the 1960s and related efforts to develop prospective analyses for major decisions at the Department of Defense and eventually the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s. We have a great many successes where evaluations, and prospective analyses, vastly improved the decisions made by Washington, DC policy-makers.
There are also plenty of examples over the last 50 years when major policy reforms were announced without careful consideration of the evidence. But one question is important in this critique -- did sufficient, credible evidence even exist in a format useful for decision-makers? Far too often the answer is a resounding "no." Over the last several years, I have frequently been asked to speak to groups about the role of evaluation in informing different aspects of government decision-making. My punchline is often the same: Evaluation can only inform decision-making if it exists.
No evaluation that was promised -- but not delivered -- successfully influenced a policy decision. The challenge in government is developing the capacity to routinely produce evaluations that meet the needs of decision-makers. The positive influence that evaluation has had on policy in DC occurred in spite of a largely decentralized and uncoordinated evaluation function in government. Not all Federal Departments have active central evaluation offices and there is great heterogeneity in production and use across agencies. The lack of coordination in Federal evaluation is starting to slowly change. Several years ago, evaluation offices worked with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to recognize government could do better in coordinating the evaluation function. Together, they formed the Interagency Council on Evaluation Policy (ICEP). Then, working through ICEP, a group of agencies funded the National Academy of Sciences to convene a workshop to discuss principles and practices for evaluation in the Federal government. [1] Taken together, both actions are positive signs for the growing interest in institutionalizing an evaluation function in the Federal government -- a task longtime Washington Evaluators member Joe Wholey called for nearly 45 years ago. [2] Why does coordination and the constant presence of the evaluation function matter? Because when evaluation is institutionalized it is also demanded, it is expected, and it happens. Institutionalization creates and maintains champions -- individuals who offer a constant voice to encourage activities and policies be evaluated, ensuring that the evidence does exist to inform decisions. Champions then produce real examples and success stories of the power evaluation can have on improving programs and services. Ultimately in the long-term, demand for evaluation drives its supply. Evaluation supply relies on a range of factors, from legal authority to resources and expertise. But, perhaps above all, evaluation needs a motivated leader to set the stage. [3] Leaders and evaluation champions can assume many forms, within the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch. And that's why this fall Washington Evaluators is happy to co-sponsor EvalAction this fall for members of Washington Evaluators and the American Evaluation Association. EvalAction will provide evaluators the opportunity to engage with congressional offices about the important role of evaluation in informing changes to Federal policies. With any luck, EvalAction may even help identify some new champions for evaluation in Congress.
Hopefully in the next 50 years when asked whether the evidence even existed to inform decisions, we will be able to more frequently offer a resounding and emphatic "yes!"
NICK HART, PH.D. is the President of Washington Evaluators in 2017 and a member of the American Evaluation Association's Evaluation Policy Task Force. The views presented here are those of the author and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Government, including the Office of Management Budget and the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.
References:
[1] National Academy of Sciences. 2017. Workshop on “Principles & Practices for Federal Program Evaluation.” Washington, DC: Committee on National Statistics. [2] Wholey, J., et al. 1973. Federal Evaluation Policy. Washington DC: The Urban Institute. [3] Hart, N. 2016. Evaluation at EPA: Determinants of Evaluation Supply at the Environmental Protection Agency. Diss. Washington, DC: George Washington University.
Fellow Evaluators --
Five months into a remarkable year for the field of program evaluation in the Washington, DC area, our organization is as active as ever. I am continuously reminded of the incredible dedication those in the DC-area demonstrate to promoting and advocating for evaluation, and I am inspired by the commitment our members show to bettering the field and our profession.
The spirit of strengthening evaluation is widespread, and that is precisely the motivation that led to the creation of a new Washington Evaluators 2017-2020 Strategic Plan, approved by the Board of Directors on May 17, 2017. I would especially like to thank the Board for their efforts in drafting the plan and all of the members who provided feedback on an earlier draft in recent weeks to support improving our organization.
A hallmark of the evaluation profession is assessing actions against stated goals. With the creation of this plan, Washington Evaluators as an organization is not only demonstrating the value of this proposition, but actively pursuing a well-known organizational best practice. This strategic plan has been developed to serve as a guide for Washington Evaluators for the remainder of this year and in coming years, as the organization strives to focus on "Strengthening the Evaluation Community in the Washington, DC Area."
Currently Washington Evaluators performs well on many levels, but there is always room for improvement and a need to know where we are starting from. As Washington Evaluators becomes more mature as an organization, this plan will be a guide for the Board of Directors and enable the development of annual action plans that contribute to achieving longer-term goals. It is my hope and intent that in coming years, future Boards will review and update the plan to ensure that the members of Washington Evaluators are receiving useful services and professional development opportunities that truly serve the Washington, DC community well for years to come.
And to demonstrate how progress will be made in accomplishing the goals and objectives in the 2017-2020 Strategic Plan, the Board is pleased to also announce a 2017 Action Plan as a complement, with specific short-term goals the Board will pursue this year. All of these actions are reasonably attainable – and some are even bold and ambitious – as Washington Evaluators embarks on a renewed effort for continuous organizational improvement.
The Board and our many volunteers have much work to do in this exciting year for evaluation in DC, but we are up to the challenge. On behalf of the entire Board, we look forward to your continued participation in the Washington Evaluators community.
Regards,
--Nick
Nicholas R. Hart, Ph.D. 2017 President Washington Evaluators
UPDATE: The final strategic plan was approved by the Board of Directors on May 17, 2017. For an updated version of this post and links to the approved plan, click here.
Dear Washington Evaluators Members --
I am excited to announce that over the last several months, the Board of Directors of Washington Evaluators has been engaged in a comprehensive strategic planning process for the organization. For professional evaluators, we know that strategic plans are incredibly valuable documents in outlining strategies for achieving organizational excellence and eventually assessing organizational performance.
One of my goals as President in 2017, articulated at the beginning of the year, is to reinforce the organization's infrastructure to ensure the sustainability of Washington Evaluators well into the future. Developing a robust strategic plan is one small step toward fulfilling that goal.
As part of our development of this strategy and plan, we are specifically seeking input from all active members of Washington Evaluators. Linked below is a draft document the Board will consider during the May 2017 Board meeting. We would like your feedback on the revised organizational mission statement, strategic goals, and objectives outlined in the plan.
Comments will be accepted on the plan from today through midnight on May 15th. Let us know what you think is most valuable to prioritize, or other goals and objectives you believe should be included in the plan.
Review the Draft Strategic Plan
Submit Comments on the Draft Strategic Plan until 11:59 PM EST, Monday, May 15
Thank you in advance for your feedback and your continued contributions to the D.C. evaluation community.
Regards, --Nick
Nick Hart, Ph.D. 2017 President Washington Evaluators
Today was a big day for evaluation, for evidence, and for science. Today, thousands of ordinary people took to the streets in Washington, DC – and in cities across the country – to proclaim support for the idea that science can and should play an important role in our society.
As I walked through the streets of Washington this afternoon, I was impressed to see people from all walks of life, the young and old, Republicans and Democrats, and representatives of the many disciplines of the scientific community marching alongside each other, in spite of pouring rain. This great diversity of resilient marchers reflects the continued belief that science is not a partisan or ideological endeavor; instead, it is an enterprise that can be used to develop better policies.
Earlier this week the American Evaluation Association's Board and the Evaluation Policy Task Force recognized evaluation as an important part of the scientific community by endorsing the goals and mission of today's March for Science. In doing so, AEA reminded us that
"Evaluation is an essential function of government. It can enhance oversight and accountability of federal programs, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of services, assess which programs or policies are working and which are not, and provide critical information needed for making difficult decisions about them."
Indeed, AEA's timeless statement captures the sentiment I encourage all members of Washington Evaluators to promote this year: evaluation matters. Evaluation doesn't just matter because it's our profession, evaluation matters because it is a tool to enhance people's lives and ultimately improve our society, and those are goals we can all agree on.
On March 10th, Washington Evaluators and The Evaluators Institute convened a panel of evaluation experts to discuss "Evaluation Policies and Approaches Across Administrations." On a Friday evening, more than 50 evaluators joined to reflect on how evaluation policy has been shaped over the years by different Presidents and to what degree evidence was used to inform policy decisions across administrations. The panelists each offered interesting perspectives from their various experiences. Here are several points from my own remarks that are especially relevant to our evaluation community in DC.
Our Shared Goal
While the transition of power in the Executive Branch of government affects how policies are implemented, and which are prioritized, it's important to remember that evaluators and policymakers share a common goal – to improve the lives of people. Despite differences in political views and philosophies, which will undoubtedly vary, we must strive to acknowledge our shared goals, because this is precisely what evaluation seeks to achieve – better, more efficient programs and policies that improve people lives.
We use evaluation to improve programs that help keep homeless veterans off the streets, ensure children have enough food to eat, protect our health by limiting pollution in our air and water, help the unemployed find work, and provide opportunity to those who need it most. It is because our common goals are the same that determining how to best achieve our policy aims is a moral imperative.
In thinking about the relationship between evaluators and policymakers, we must also acknowledge that evaluation is inherently political. We work in a profession that is designed to pass judgment on policies and programs, to announce winners and losers. Pericles said that "just because you do not take an interest in politics, does not mean politics will not take an interest in you." And this is exactly where evaluators often find themselves; it's where we thrive. But even then, we must recognize that evaluation needs to be conducted in an apolitical manner, maximizing the credibility of findings with an appropriate level of independence.
New Priorities in New Administrations, Yet Common Challenges Persist
New administrations will always introduce new priorities, but that does not lessen the value of evaluation for its two primary purposes: accountability and learning. We often have questions in new administrations about what priorities will be the real focus – and whether evaluation will be part of that discussion. In practice, we know that in recent years, whether in times of increasing or declining budgets, agencies have articulated a priority for building new evidence.
In 2015, Kathy Newcomer and I wrote a working paper comparing the evidence initiatives in the George W. Bush Administration and the Barack Obama Administration. What you see looking across them is that there are a striking number of similarities, most of which have nothing to do with political philosophies. Instead, they have everything to do with the shared goal of making government better, and improving the lives of Americans.
In the Bush Administration, efforts to implement the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) included specific questions about evaluation that we know today encouraged some agencies to pursue evaluation, bolstering evaluation capacity. During the Bush Administration, Federal agencies started developing clearinghouses for evaluation results and increased funding for targeted evaluation activities across government. Then, the Obama Administration pursued the "thousand flowers bloom" strategy building on the Bush efforts by requesting even more funding for evaluation, pushing out initiatives to encourage pay for success, and even creating new, formal evaluation positions in some parts of government.
Looking across these initiatives, Kathy Newcomer and I distilled three key challenges that persist. First, we need to identify how to better balance the purposes of evidence-building activities, recognizing there is a need for methods in evaluation to address both the learning and accountability purposes. Addressing both purposes also means we need to better synergize the existing infrastructure for evidence-building in government, starting with a recognition that the canyon between performance measurement and evaluation must be bridged.
Second, attention must be given to acquiring and sustaining audiences for evidence. And this is the case regardless of which political party controls the White House. For years we have simply assumed that the establishment of demand for evaluation, met with sufficient supply, presents one strategy for developing and maintaining a use case for performance information. But neither administration made serious strides in helping their political appointees embrace evaluation or other evidence initiatives.
Third, initiatives must be implemented effectively. This point seems so obvious it's almost not worth saying – except that we must be explicit about the role effective implementation has in initiatives' success. Even the best designed, theory-based initiative must face the realities of implementation in the complex, institutional structures of government. In practice, the perverse incentives introduced with mandating performance and evaluation activities may lead implementers to focus merely on measurable outcomes, rather than the desirable. This is one of the reasons why more cross-agency collaboration is needed, to break down silos of topical emphases to look at how programs interact. For far too long, cross-agency collaboration has been an oxymoron in government and it's time to address this limitation.
Moving Forward: What You Can Do
Given the many challenges facing the evaluation community regardless of who is in the seat of power, what can be done to move forward? Here are several brief suggestions:
1. Stay Calm. Transitions are a routine part of democratic society. It takes time for agency leaders to settle in and to learn about the priorities before them. Evaluation may not be the first thing that a new appointee turns to, but inevitably it will be part of the discussion – everyone wants to know what they achieved at the end of an appointment. This is one strategy for beginning to build a better audience for evaluation.
2. Articulate the value of evaluation as a community. We can do this by bolstering our professional networks of evaluators, both inside and outside of government to facilitate appropriate connections and ensure the multiple purposes of evaluation are represented. In the DC area we have Washington Evaluators to facilitate this networking, and there are several other communities of practice available to individuals within the government. With a broader community we can help present evaluation as a tool for more than informing budget decisions – though we hope that it is among those tools – but one that helps promote learning and continuous improvement in policies and programs.
3. Inform decision-makers about the usefulness of evaluation. In order for evaluation to be useful, decision-makers will need to understand how existing evaluations can be used to help shape and frame new policies, or even review old ones. These available evaluations allow us to find opportunities to continue to educate the public and their leaders about the role many important government programs play in achieving our shared goal for the country, especially in helping to implement initiatives effectively. Evaluators can help facilitate informed use of evaluation, noting the relevance of existing evaluations and identifying important caveats as new policy decisions are formulated.
4. Help agencies find opportunities to bolster their analyses. Similar to the suggestion above about highlighting the usefulness of evaluation, we can actually strive to make evaluation more useful too! One strategy might be to incorporate in our evaluations analysis of disparities in policies that exist across subgroups of our population. I recently wrote at greater length about the latest Dialogue on Race and Class, a January event co-sponsored by Washington Evaluators, the American Evaluation Association, and George Washington University. Our community must give greater attention to the evaluation of subgroups because the challenges facing our society are complex and disparities can be inadvertently embedded in policies. We owe it to our fellow citizens to help identify and address such injustices.
At the end of the day, we do not live in a perfect system of government. In fact, change in the policies of our representative democracy was designed to be difficult. But it's what we've got. So let's make the best of it by continuing to learn and improve together, to accomplish our shared goal.
On January 30th, I was honored to participate in a Dialogue on Race and Class in America, co-sponsored by Washington Evaluators, the American Evaluation Association, and the Trachtenberg School at George Washington University. Issues of inequities in race and class have continued to reflect "wicked problems" in our society and in the evaluation profession. The conversation we started last month was just an opening to the dialogue among evaluators. The first step is acknowledging the challenge, the second is beginning to identify solutions for continued progress to address the challenge in our own work.
While the full panel discussion on January 30th was more than 90 minutes in length, I want to draw your attention to several key points from my own remarks that are especially salient for Washington Evaluators.
The Social Mobility Challenge
Social mobility in America today is simply not equitable. This point is often taken for granted, and therefore must be explicitly acknowledged: we know that today opportunities are not equal for everyone in this country, even if they should be. When we stratify groups of individuals by race, ethnicity, gender, or economic status, not all are on an equal playing field, often by no fault of their own. This is our current reality.
The challenges have been documented in a growing body of literature and analysis. For example, Isabell Sawhill at the Brookings Institution cites that about two-thirds of white individuals in poverty move to the middle class by middle age, but less than one-third of black individuals do the same. Raj Chetty's recent work suggests that children today are increasingly unlikely to earn more than their parents, and this trend is amplified for minority children.
Many communities, businesses, and non-profits across the country are committed to helping Americans realize opportunities by supporting mentoring programs or training for specific skills, to ultimately help individuals reach the workforce. We've seen this as a consistent message from our political leaders – that transcends political parties and philosophies: regardless of your race, gender, or upbringing, we all have a right to succeed.
The Obama Administration spearheaded an initiative that was specifically aimed at targeting disparities where they existed. Through the creation of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force, Federal agencies and communities across the country focused attention on creating opportunities for young people to reach their full potential. President Obama described it as one way to reinforce the core value of community.
So however we perceive the social mobility disparities that exist today, there is broad agreement that (1) the disparities are real and (2) social immobility is not a reflection of our shared values.
Addressing the Inequities of Social Mobility with Evaluation
So what can be done to address the challenge? Three actions of particular importance come to mind that evaluators can begin to take today: consider context, assess disparities, and communicate race and class dynamics to evaluation users.
First, context matters. Always. Lee Cronbach made this appeal to the evaluation community in his evaluation theses in 1984. This is very much the case for issues related to race and class. Evaluation of policies and programs must appropriately address the context in which they operate.
In real estate we say "location, location, location." Place matters in determining access to opportunity and services. Recent re-analysis of the Moving to Opportunity demonstration project suggests that for every extra year a child avoids a low-poverty environment, that child benefits, as measured through increases in lifetime earnings. Other recent work by Raj Chetty et al. identified substantial disparities in life expectancy based on geography; this has serious implications for race and class.
If context matters, then evaluators must be able to consider the implications of these aspects on their own perspectives evaluating projects. In practice, this might mean that at the outset of an evaluation, an evaluator needs to develop a deeper understanding of a community or social group to effectively and fairly carry out an evaluation. In order to be culturally sensitive, an evaluator may need to tap into networks of other evaluators or colleagues who can assist in understanding community values and group perspectives. Washington Evaluators provides a vital network that can help fill this gap while strengthening our entire evaluation community, and other AEA affiliates around the country are positioned to do the same.
Second, evaluation of disparities is essential. Because there are persistent challenges in realizing social mobility opportunities, we need continuous attention to current policies and programs to ensure they target real barriers. Evaluators can offer an important contribution to address injustice, simply by providing analysis that identifies the disparities.
We can all recognize and generally agree that generating valid, reliable, and relevant evidence about how programs work, when they work, and for whom is absolutely critical. For addressing social mobility inequities, we must strive to understand the whom through the completion of sub-group analyses when possible, whether by race, class, gender, or some other attribute relevant to the purpose of an evaluation and the needs of the audience.
Finally, race and class dynamics should be communicated to evaluation clients and users. Evaluators cannot force decision-makers and funders to consider race and class in their actions, but we can encourage them to give these issues appropriate attention by including these important considerations in our evaluations and analyses. At a minimum, drawing attention to disparities helps bring issues to light for broader accountability in communities participating in programs and policies of interest.
Will the evaluation profession single-handedly address all the injustices in our society? Of course not. But we can begin to take steps that move us in a positive direction. First, we must recognize social mobility is inequitable. Then, we can apply our expertise and draw attention to the real problems that exist. This seemingly minor contribution will help us all design better programs and policies that provide everyone with the opportunity to succeed, including those who face the greatest inequities.
NICK HART, PH.D. is the President of Washington Evaluators in 2017. The views presented here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.
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Fellow WE Members -- It is my great honor to kick off an exciting year for the field of evaluation here in Washington, DC! We expect discussions about evidence-building in the DC-area will continue to see an intense focus in 2017, highlighting evaluation's critical role in supporting and informing decisions in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector. I'm excited for Washington Evaluators (WE) to play a crucial role that increasingly supports our community and profession.
Let me begin by thanking the all-volunteer 2017 Board for Washington Evaluators for their service, and their willingness to help strengthen the field of evaluation here in DC. I'd also like to thank last year's WE President, David Bernstein, for his leadership and dedication to our community, and will look forward to his continued participation on the Board as Past-President. As our attention turns from the many accomplishments of 2016 to the possibilities in 2017 for learning with and from evaluation, I want to take this opportunity to highlight my priorities over the next year as WE's 2017 President:
1. Support Initiatives Strengthening the National Evaluation Community. As many of you know, in addition to the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) annual conference returning to DC this fall, former WE President Kathy Newcomer recently became President of AEA. Given WE's history of working closely with AEA, WE will be heavily involved in many of AEA's activities this year. First, later this month, WE will be co-sponsoring a Dialogue on Race and Class that I hope many of you will join. Second, in partnership with AEA's Evaluation Policy Task Force, WE is co-sponsoring an initiative for evaluators to visit Members of Congress and their staff this fall to discuss the importance of evaluation practice (details here). Then, of course, this November AEA's annual evaluation conference returns to DC (#Eval17). As part of WE's support, we will be reinforcing the 2017 conference theme "From Learning to Action" through our events for the entire year. Finally, over the spring and fall, WE members Giovanni Dazzo and Jonathan Jones will be coordinating the Local Arrangements Working Group to help facilitate the DC-hosting of the fall conference.
2. Enhance Evaluation Services and Benefits for our DC-based Members. Your WE membership entitles you to participate in our many professional development activities and evaluation networking events. This year WE will be expanding the benefits available as part of your membership, and also working to increase the opportunities to meaningfully engage with your fellow evaluators.
First, we're aiming to provide more professional development events this year and are exploring opportunities to increasingly allow for remote participation for our members. Our first professional development event of the year will pilot allowing members to join by phone! Second, over the next month WE will be launching a new mentoring program designed over the past year -- stay tuned for details. Third, building on Lee Cronbach's suggestion that the sine qua non for improving the evaluation enterprise was building a stronger evaluation profession, WE will be doing more to connect evaluators to colleagues in their own neighborhoods in 2017. As part of this effort, later this month I will be hosting evaluators who live on Capitol Hill in my home for what I hope to be the first in a longer series of Sine Quo Non Dinners. Fourth, new professionals and students are the future of the evaluation community. For this reason, this month I am creating a special task force to develop a strategy for better serving this part of our community. Finally, as a service to the entire evaluation community in DC, I am also creating special committee to develop a new scholarship program to contribute to supporting the growth of evaluation in our region. The special committee will be charged with designing a program to award scholarships that can support individuals in the DC-area participating in our local and national community of evaluation practitioners.
3. Reinforce our Infrastructure for WE's Sustainability. As WE grew over the last decade, new opportunities and ideas have been constantly presented to the Board as a way to expand WE's reach. To ensure these new opportunities align with the broader strategic vision for our organization, this winter the WE Board will develop a strategic plan to help guide our future initiatives and planning. But even in the absence of that plan, there is much work to be done to strengthen our infrastructure and to continue expanding our community. In this vein, several targeted efforts are already underway. First, in 2017, WE is making some monthly Board meetings more accessible by piloting virtual meetings in several months. Second, renewing memberships can sometimes come at inconvenient times since we're all busy. For our professional members, WE just launched a two year renewal option to help reduce the burden of processing memberships every year. The choice of a one year or two year renewal is up to each individual member, but the two year option ensures you will stay informed and be eligible for other benefits without interruption. We will continue exploring other opportunities to minimize the administrative burden in the future as well. Third, we know that many WE members work for small organizations and can benefit from having multiple members as part of our evaluation community. So WE just launched new organization sponsorships that encourage joint memberships with colleagues in your own workplace. WE will feature these organizations on our website as WE sponsors and hope to find opportunities to partner with these organizations on events in the future.
As you can see, 2017 will be an exciting year for evaluation in DC, and we have much work to do. I hope that each of you will commit to attending events, networking with fellow evaluators, and volunteering to support our evidence-building community. I hope to see you soon and look forward to a very exciting year focused on learning in our evaluation field and supporting our society's need for continuous evidence-building.
Regards, --Nick Nick Hart, Ph.D.2017 PresidentWashington Evaluators
Washington Evaluators Washington, DCcommunications@washingtonevaluators.org
(c) 2017 Washington Evaluators
