2. Purpose of the Initiative:
The Department of Defense Education Activity operates 224 schools in 15 countries. Throughout the system, partnerships are viewed as an important tool that ensures the academic, social, and emotional growth of students and the maximization of school resources. Stakeholders recognize that partnerships differ along many dimensions like the scope of their services and in their impact on students and their schools. But how do school-based teams decide which partnerships benefit their students most? How do they consider which partnerships need to be expanded and intensified? How do they establish the criteria that their evaluation teams use to identify best practices in the present and student and school needs for the future?
The audit tool process clarifies those decisions for the School Improvement Teams. The tools provided help schools describe their current partnerships, their best practices and their future needs.
3. Main Partners:
Consulting Research and Information Services (CRI) developed the system for DoDEA. School Improvement Teams, military families and community representatives participate in the self-evaluation of their own partnerships.
4. Main beneficiaries:
School administrators, teachers, parents, and community representatives benefit from analyzing their own partnerships in a structured roundtable discussion. In doing so, they decide how their current partnerships benefit children most, and how their future partnerships need to be both envisioned and implemented.
5. Main Contributors:
School administrators, teachers, parents, and community representatives contribute their time and hard work in reviewing their partnerships systematically at the school level. CRI synthesizes the information to provide system-wide knowledge of DoDEA’s partnership network. DoDEA helps envision and funds the efforts.
6. Essential Elements:
A site based-self evaluation (SBSE) process insures the participation of educators, parents (including military service representatives) community representatives in the school-based review of partnerships promoting achievement. Principals invite up to 12 school leaders, usually 6 educators and 6 parents/community reps to participate in the SBSE of partnerships. Each participant receives a “Read-Ahead” which maximizes the face time of the meeting. In the “Read Ahead” participants receive 3 tools which help them systematically estimate the effectiveness of their partnerships. At the face-to-face structured meeting, the SBSE team members engage in a consensus process to:
- Rate the partnerships fin terms of 19 criteria of quality
- Decide which programs will be included in the school’s database of partnerships.
- Decide which additional or modified partnerships will enable the school to better meet future needs
- Teams engage in a consensus process to rate their partnerships as “good, better, or best. They then enter data into a database form and transmit the data to DoDEA Headquarters to be compiled and analyzed.
7. Main factors of its success:
The site-based self-evaluation (SBSE) process insures that information about partnerships is both collected and used by those school leaders most involved in partnership formation and implementation. The same parents, educators, and military service representatives who volunteer their time for the evaluation are those who continually fuel the fire of partnering at the school. The SBSE participants are most aware of the conditions that promote success at their school and the needs that remain unmet. By clarifying their views in a structured exercise, those who engage in partnering learn to partner more efficiently and effectively.
8. Assessment/evaluation process and evidence of its strength:
This Site-Based Self-Evaluation Process s results in several positive outcomes.
- First, team members learn to systematically review partnerships in their own schools.
- Second, they learn to strategically plan the direction that partnership support should take in their school in the following year.
- Third, schools contribute to a Partnership Network Best Practices database that is distributed to all DoDEA schools.
By viewing the database, interested stakeholders can learn what works in schools similar to their own.
9. Number of years the program has been in existence:
Since 1997, DoDEA has been conducting site-based self-evaluations of partnerships. With the new Community Strategic Plan for 2001-2006, the evaluation process has changed somewhat. The new process aligns the evaluations with the new CSP.
I0. Impact
In 2001 CRI constructed an easily searchable database of DoDEA’s partnerships during the Year 2000. Parents, teachers and administrators use the database to examine partnerships of interest to them. The networking potential is important to DoDEA’s 224 schools located in 15 countries around the world.
11. Potential replication and scale
This system is easily replicated in schools throughout the United States. A panel of partnership experts established the criteria of quality. The evaluation methods are easy to teach and learn.
12. Names and addressees of underwriters who validate the application:
Primary Contact:
E. Judy Barokas, Ph.D.
Consulting Research & Information Services
1654 Wainwright Drive
Reston, Virginia 20190-3431
(703) 736-0275: Phone
(703) 736-0276: Fax
jbarokas@consultingresearch.net
Additional Contacts:
Georgia Williams-Scaife, Ph.D. & Mark Bignell
DoDEA
4040 North Fairfax Drive
Webb Building, 9th Floor
Arlington, Virginia 22203-1635
696-4412 ext. 1909