An article in today's Des Moines Register questions whether "state tax credits" have "worked" for Iowa or not. Here we go again. In the void created by the absence of real evaluation and/or performance measurement your guess is as good as mine. Not so fast, you say; not all guesses are created equal.
Hold on. I'm reminded of two things that Michael Q. Patton has said about the complicated and delicate subject of "evaluation." One addresses its political nature; the other, its religious.
Evaluation's political nature. Back in the late 1980s, the American Evaluation Association (AEA), staged an essay contest among evaluators to address: What is and is not politics in evaluation, and by what criteria does one judge the difference? Submissions were received, and Robin Turpin's 1989 essay was selected. One of her assertions illustrated the overarching theme of all entries: "politics has a nasty habit of sneaking into all aspects of evaluation." One submission, an anonymous one that Patton included in Utilization-Focused Evaluation (1997, p. 352), was "uniequivocal;"
Evaluation's religious nature: Evaluators chat it up on EVALTALK and several other venues. Back in 2001, when compassionate conservatives were unveiling so-called "faith-based" organizations of one kind or another, evaluators were huddling up to explore unique opportunities and implications connected to these kinds of programs. Putting things into proper perspective was, again, Michael Q. Patton, (EVALTALK Listserve, 2001), who reminded everyone of the following:
Hold on. I'm reminded of two things that Michael Q. Patton has said about the complicated and delicate subject of "evaluation." One addresses its political nature; the other, its religious.
Evaluation's political nature. Back in the late 1980s, the American Evaluation Association (AEA), staged an essay contest among evaluators to address: What is and is not politics in evaluation, and by what criteria does one judge the difference? Submissions were received, and Robin Turpin's 1989 essay was selected. One of her assertions illustrated the overarching theme of all entries: "politics has a nasty habit of sneaking into all aspects of evaluation." One submission, an anonymous one that Patton included in Utilization-Focused Evaluation (1997, p. 352), was "uniequivocal;"
Evaluation is NOT political under the following conditions:
No one cares about the program.
No one knows about the program.
No money is at stake.
No power or authority is at stake.
And, no one in the program, making decisions about the program, or otherwise
involved in, knowledgeable about, or attached to the program, is sexually active.
From an evaluation perspective,
any program is faith-based unless and until it has evaluation evidence of effectiveness.
By that criterion, most programs have always been and remain essentially faith-based.
I'll leave it at that. No, wait. I can't resist. Programs can be "judged" by anyone with an opinion, but they can only be "evaluated" by someone with data.
