Program Evaluation

If society were content with its structure and operation, it would be unlikely to mount social and educational programs. It clearly is not, and so it does. Programs are experiments with alternative futures, models for the reform of discredited presents or extensions of favored pasts. A program is generally a set of temporary arrangements for trying out new ways of providing services or conducting professional action. Having mounted a program, the organization or funding agency is compelled to measure its productivity and its impact and to understand its experience. In a context of public skepticism about a program's own claims of success, program evaluation is commissioned as a process dedicated to making, generating, or feeding judgments about the worth or significance of a program. For ...