This article presents an interview with Eric Barela, a K-12 school district internal evaluator who conducted the Title I Best Practices study for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Research and Planning Division (formerly known as the Program Evaluation and Research Branch). In this interview, the author focuses not only on the…

The author feels that the stakeholder approach unavoidably pushes the evaluation toward technical compromises and accommodations that diminish the long-term gains in knowledge. (PN)

Stakeholder-based studies modify the relationship between evaluator and user, producing conflict that can cause evaluators to regress to familiar, traditional patterns that leave interactive evaluation strategies only partially implemented. (Author/PN)

Analysis of the assumptions underlying the stakeholder approach to evaluation combined with the limited experience in testing the approach reported in this volume, suggests that some claims are cogent and others problematical. (Author)

Bank's report of a long-term evaluation of the Bureau of Jewish Education, discussed in the previous article, is reviewed and commented on from the following points of views: (1) effects of local ecology on evaluation activities; (2) implications of the case study for the role and training of evaluators; and (3) unemphasized aspects of the case…

Critiquing the stakeholder idea, the author states: if government chooses to take account of competing views in social program evaluation, it can get a better result if it encourages the competing views to find a voice of their own, not to speak through the government's chosen instrument. (Author/PN)

Deliberately involving urban education stakeholders in the Cities-in-Schools evaluation study improved the utility of the findings for formative evaluation stakeholders but not for summative evaluation stakeholders. (Author/PN)

Stakeholder evaluation was designed to address widely recognized problems in the conduct of evaluation. However, global propositions about the problems and prospects of program evaluation obscure the circumstances in which social science can contribute to social problem solving. (Author/PN)

Applies empirical data from case studies of assessment to illustrate the student-stakeholder viewpoint of assessment within a fitness-for-purpose approach. Finds students identify purposes for assessment in terms that are educationally sound, such as its effects on learning and motivation, extent of openness and clarity, and feedback and guidance…

The review of the Los Angeles Bureau of Jewish Education is described by the evaluator. She provides background information on the Bureau, her personal perspective, the major evaluation events and activities (including data collection efforts, progress reports, data analysis, and the final report), past review events, and her personal reflections.…