Return-Path: <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id g5REoRX21781; Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:50:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:50:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <p05001901b940d35ecc52@[146.186.96.31]> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Barb Van Horn <blv1@psu.edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:130] Re: Assessment question X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Status: O Content-Length: 2066 Lines: 44 Dianna, >I'm working on a project and would be interested to know what you all see as >issues/concerns with assessment and/or evaluation in family literacy >programs. Any feedback you can give me would be most helpful. Since I'm in the middle of family literacy evaluation and assessment issues... One of the biggest problems in family literacy assessment is the lack of valid and reliable assessments for parent education. PA's focus in this component is on building parents' knowledge about their children's language and literacy development and/or negotiating the school system. To the best of my knowledge, not much is out there that targets these knowledge areas for parents who participate in family literacy. Also, we lack instruments to assess changes that occur as a result of PACT or home visits. Again, in PA we focus on parent-child communication with an emphasis on language and literacy. BTW, we realize a lot of other skills and knowledge are developed in parenting and PACT; however, language and literacy are our focus for assessment. In terms of a statewide evaluation, we also have difficulty in balancing our quantitative analyses with qualitative analyses. Both contribute to the strength of the report, but with 70 family literacy programs, it's difficult to collect sufficient qualitative data on perceived outcomes and long-term effects. We are working on this aspect, but it will take a while to solve the situation. In terms of local evaluation, I see 2 general problems: 1) difficulty for local programs to find a qualified evaluator who understands family literacy and 2) difficulty in getting programs and their evaluators to work together toward using evaluation data for program improvement rather than seeing the evaluation as a simple validation that the program is 'doing great' and doesn't need to improve. Barb -- Barb Van Horn (M.Ed., Reading) Co-Director, Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy and Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy College of Education, Penn State University
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