Build Evidence through Evaluations: Examples

Examples of Evaluation Policies 

• The city of Tempe, Arizona’s evaluation policy defines evaluation, outlines a set of principles that should guide the city’s evaluations, provides guidance on how and when evaluation should be used, and outlines the processes that the city will use to ensure their evaluation policy is carried out consistently.

• At the federal level, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 ("Evidence Act"), requires federal agencies to establish and publicly share Agency Evaluation Policies. These include the U.S. Department of Education’s evaluation policy. 
• To promote its new evaluation policy to nontechnical audiences, the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) created a short video. Available on YouTube, the video details the five principles grounding the policy—rigor,relevance, transparency, independence and ethics—and why the policy is important. This helped to increase understanding of and build momentum for effective programs and data-driven governance.

Examples of Local Evaluation Partnerships 

• The National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships includes over 70 members, each an example of an RPP. Members include the following local examples:
  • The Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) is a research practice-partnership between institutions of higher education in Maryland, Baltimore City Public Schools, organizations that serve families and children in Baltimore City, and other civic and community partners.
  • The Boston Early Childhood Research Practice Partnership (RPP), which includes practitioners at the Boston Public Schools and researchers from the University of Michigan, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and MDRC.
  • The SUCCESS Research Practitioner Partnership, short for Secure and Upgrade Computer Science in Classrooms through an Ecosystem with Scalability & Sustainability, aims to boost access to computer science learning in middle school classrooms across West Virginia by enhancing curriculum and professional development for teachers.
• The University of Chicago’s Education Lab’s (EdLab) mission is to partner with school districts to design, test and scale programs to ensure all students have the opportunity for future success. EdLab provides capacity building and program evaluation support to its LEA partners and is a model research-practice partnership.
• Government agencies in Washington, D.C. often rely on The Lab @ DC, its internal data and evaluation shop.