ECUR 809 Assignment #2

ECUR 809 Assignment #2

The following is an assessment of possible evaluation strategies regarding Alberta Education’s ECS Programming for Children with Severe Disabilities.

Given the ECS program’s description, I believe the primary evaluation strategy would be an outcome-based or goal oriented, summative evaluation. The ultimate purpose of this program is that it “must meet the child’s needs”; a very broad objective but one that would be paramount in a program such as this. Michael Scriven’s model would be appropriate in that the reasons for the program need to be identified. The effectiveness of the program would be measured based on how well the primary goals have been achieved. Ideally, this evaluation would start by identifying just what some of the specific needs of these children are, obviously followed by an assessment of how well they were being met.

This program has children with severe/profound disabilities so, ideally, a pre-test and post-test would reveal just how well their needs have been met. If this is unavailable, I believe much could be learned by a post-test only. Measurement tools might be changes in skills, behaviours, and learning while the children were in the program. Since the program is three years long maximum, children could also be monitored for changes once leaving the program to give further indications of its effectiveness. In addition to the children themselves, much information may be gathered through interviews with other care providers like social workers or those in health services who might be involved in the child’s care. The primary source of information as to whether or not the needs of these children are being met would ultimately come from the parents or principal care givers. Knowing the child the best, these people would be in the best position to reflect on whether the program was indeed providing the benefits (i.e. meeting the child’s needs) that they require.

I would not rule out a formative or process evaluation but I think the summative one would be valuable to do first to help guide the direction of the formative one. If interviews with primary care givers reveal that some facets of the program are inadequate, it would help immensely to direct the issues focused on in the formative evaluation. For example, a process evaluation could look at things like the allocation of in-home vs center-based services, time of average home visits (1.5 hours), number of home visits per year (minimum of four), age criteria for eligibility, and criteria for assessing the child’s current level of functioning. In fact, this type of program would lend itself quite well to a combination of summative and formative evaluation where the outcomes are assessed and, at the same time, possible improvements in the process are identified as well. This evaluation would be time consuming as much of the information would be attained through personal interviews but it would be all the richer for the insights gleaned from this approach. Practical solutions to any potential problems could result directly from the involvement of the people in the best position to analyze how the program is working for, or worked for, the child in their care.