External (Third Party) Evaluator

ELOA (Early Learning Opportunities Act) Discretionary Grant Project (2006-07)

Grant # 90LO0160/01

The ELOA project was/is made possible by grant number 90LO0160 from the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, child Care Bureau, of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the amount of $594,357 ELOA  grant (80% of total project costs).  The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official views of the funding agency, nor does publication in any way constitute an endorsement by the funding agency.

My portion of the grant tasks were: (1) evaluating the READ from the START workshop series, (2) follow-up with QRS Scholarships, (3) helping to run three focus groups, (4) tracking distribution of information packets from birth through the start of kindergarten, (5) level of attendance at recognition events, and (6) summarizing results from parent-completed surveys on their children's early life experiences prior to starting kindergarten.

The final report for all sections, including my parts, is in the final stages of being compiled (summer 2007).

BLEND (Building Learning Environments for New Directions) Project (2005-06)

The project’s objectives encompass progressing from collaborative workshop experiences (i.e., products from a previously funded project) to the development of a “proof of concept” unit of a blended learning environment for high school Spanish.  The unit was tested against conventional control groups to determine its viability when compared to known successful models.

Testing involved the assessment of student learning and attitudes, teacher perspectives, and evaluation of the BLEND approach as applied to a unit within Spanish I high school classes for the selected samples of control and treatment conditions.  The unit was called “MI HORARIO ESCOLAR” (my school schedule).  The expectations of the project were:  (1) student learning would be higher under the BLEND approach as compared with the conventional approach, and (2) the project would be scalable beyond a single class unit.

Final report