Evaluation Activities

The SIG has completed a number of evaluation activities, including:

• Annual Performance Report: Each year, SIG gathers information and writes a performance report describing the progress made in achieving the SIG's goals and objectives during the preceding year. The report is required by OSEP to continue SIG funding for the next year. The report consists of a narrative summary and a table of about 12 pages describing each SIG-related activity and resulting accomplishments and outcomes. (available upon request)
• Annual Evaluation of CSSS: SIG participates on the evaluation design team for the CSSS, and each year gathers information and writes an evaluation report for the CSSS. In addition, a contractor summarizes data from the CSSS Database and feeds it back to schools, complexes, and districts in CD-ROM format.
• Data Collection for Students with Disabilities: SIG has been providing technical assistance on the development of data sources to meet OSEP reporting requirements: (a) data analysis to determine the drop out rate of students with disabilities, and (b) development of a system to track post-school outcomes of students with disabilities.
• Evaluation of the Quality Assurance Leilehua Team: SIG has been providing technical assistance to help the six work groups of the Leilehua QALT develop and implement evaluation activities to determine needs and assess progress in meeting them.
• Evaluation of the Student Service Coordinator Certificate Training Program: SIG is developing evaluation activities to assess the effectiveness of the SSC certificate training program and whether SSCs who completed the program are helping their schools to improve service delivery and achieve better student outcomes.
• Westat National Evaluation of SIG: SIG supported Westat in its national evaluation of the federal SIG program, by supplying evaluation materials and providing feedback on the logic model developed by Westat for the Hawaii SIG.
  

One finding common to various evaluation activities at the system level is that available data are generally not sufficiently reliable, timely, and integrated enough to allow for in-depth evaluation of the quality of specific programs and services. However, the DOE is planning an integrated database that will incorporate all available information on all students, and this database has the potential to make Hawaii a national leader in educational data management and the use of data for quality assurance. From an evaluation standpoint, development of this database should be expedited and given top priority in order to efficiently capture the impacts and support the quality assurance of DOE's many school improvement initiatives (standards, CSSS, literacy, SBBH, PBS, etc.). A recommended priority area is to increase training and other supports for school-level quality assurance activities, which are a key component of the SIDs developed by all schools. It is critical for schools to be able to use the extensive data they have at hand to continuously assess the effectiveness of what they do and make appropriate adjustments.