Evaluating in a Fragmented Society

Background: Over decades American society has become increasingly fragmented, distrusting, and unequal. Distrust and inequality interact with institutions performing improperly to weaken the society. Purpose: To suggest ways to strengthen evaluation’s role in a changing society Setting: Evaluation has entered a post normal phase where evaluations are losing credibility and effectiveness. Intervention: Analyze the changing society and suggest adjustments that evaluators might make. Research design: Collate and synthesize empirical studies about society and the implications for evaluators. Data collection and analysis: Collect and interpret seminal empirical economic, sociological, and political studies of beliefs and inequality in the United States. Findings: To strengthen the potency of evaluations of any type, evaluators could act as moral fiduciaries, practice transparency, cultivate cognitive empathy, focus on deep stories and deep values, and mitigate inequalities in the evaluation space. They can act as critics of evaluation practices inside and outside the evaluation space. They should avoid technical, social, and situational biases, including racism, sexism, and conflicts of interest, to increase the honesty and credibility of evaluations. They should not allow career concerns to prevent them from doing the right thing. These professional ethics and practices can be applied singly or collectively to most evaluation approaches to strengthen the evaluator’s role and address major societal problems. Keywords: moral fiduciary; cognitive empathy; post normal; inequality; transparency; distrust; deep stories; value

NEPC Review: When Private Schools Take Public Dollars: What's the Place of Accountability in School Voucher Programs?

The Fordham Institute conducted a survey of experts who are advocates of private education, soliciting opinions about how private schools accepting public monies, such as from voucher programs, should be held accountable. The experts were in agreement that private schools should not accept regulation of their day-to-day operations, but disagreed among themselves whether to accept top-down standardized testing accountability. The Fordham researchers proposed a compromise position in which the more the private schools rely on public money, the more the schools should be subject to the same requirements as public schools. The Fordham study is a reasonable inquiry into the difficult area of private/public education ventures. Although the study does not arrive at a definitive position, it raises important issues about accountability in both private and public education.</p

NEPC Review: When Private Schools Take Public Dollars: What's the Place of Accountability in School Voucher Programs?

The Fordham Institute conducted a survey of experts who are advocates of private education, soliciting opinions about how private schools accepting public monies, such as from voucher programs, should be held accountable. The experts were in agreement that private schools should not accept regulation of their day-to-day operations, but disagreed among themselves whether to accept top-down standardized testing accountability. The Fordham researchers proposed a compromise position in which the more the private schools rely on public money, the more the schools should be subject to the same requirements as public schools. The Fordham study is a reasonable inquiry into the difficult area of private/public education ventures. Although the study does not arrive at a definitive position, it raises important issues about accountability in both private and public education.</p

Race and Policy

Beliefs about race have played a central role in American history, literature, and education. Racial beliefs are embedded in the national identity in complex and disguised ways. These beliefs attribute presumed character traits to African Americans and other minorities, who are thought of as different in character and ability, especially the ability to govern themselves. These beliefs lead to education policies which separate, differentiate, and mandate different curricula and treatment for minorities, policies justified as being fair and democratic. These beliefs influence not only curriculum content, but how the schools are organized, financed, and administered at a deeper level than is commonly understood

NEPC Review: Trends in Charter School Authorizing

The report surveyed charter school authorizers to explore how they rated on factors that the report's authors considered important. The report concludes that authorizers base their decisions to renew on student achievement, that authorizers have become more careful over time in authorizing charters, and that two authorizer types, nonprofits and independent chartering boards, do a better job of authorizing.</p

Eye spots do not increase altruism in children

The evolutionary legacy hypothesis proposes that an evolved reciprocity-based psychology affects human behavior in anonymous one-shot interactions when reciprocity is not explicitly possible. Empirical support rests on experiments showing that altruism among adults increases in the presence of stylized eye spots or faces. Such stimuli do not affect material payoffs, but they are assumed to activate a person’s reciprocity-based psychology. We identify two versions of the evolutionary legacy hypothesis. The weak hypothesis posits that reputational concerns can generate altruism in the absence of opportunities for a good reputation. The strong hypothesis posits that reputational concerns alone can explain anonymous one-shot altruism, and they can do so specifically in lieu of explanations based on group selection. A number of experimental studies support the weak hypothesis but are merely consistent with the strong hypothesis. To address both the weak and strong hypotheses, we conducted an eye spot experiment with children. Altruism can vary by age or sex in childhood, and under the strong hypothesis this kind of variation should reveal associated variation in sensitivity to eye spots. Although we found significant variation in altruism among children, we found no corresponding variation in sensitivity to eye spots. More generally, we found no eye spot effects of any kind. We discuss the possibility that eye spots might only affect altruism under specific conditions. We further argue that conditional effects do not refute the weak hypothesis in any way, but they do suggest potential limitations on the explanatory scope of the strong hypothesis

Early life social incongruities, health risk factors and chronic disease

This study tested specific hypotheses concerned with the relationships between three early life stress variables occurring between 0 and 16 yr of age and a variety of adult health status measures ascertained some 20-60 yr later in a 40% sample of the Tecumseh Community Health Study population 35-69 yr of age. The hypotheses stated that each of the following characteristics, relatively greater residential geographic mobility during childhood, being deprived of one or both natural parents for one or more years during this early formative period, and experiencing parental status incongruence, would be associated with higher levels of nine risk factors, greater prevalence of five chronic diseases, and a greater rate of mortality. The risk factors were systolic and diastolic blood pressure, blood glucose level, serum cholesterol, serum uric acid, the F.E.V.1.0 measure of lung function; adiposity, number of cigarettes smoked currently, and amount of alcohol consumed currently. The chronic conditions were CHD, hypertension, diabetes, chronic bronchitis and asthma. Also measured were the aggregation of these chronic conditions and whether or not the respondents ever smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol.Five mobility measures and an index were developed. As predicted, in general, significant relationships were found among women between the five separate mobility variables and the health measures. Specifically, all five separate measures of mobility were related to CHD among older women, and most were related to cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption among all women. Various of the five mobility measures were related to various other specific health measures. In general, mobility was not related to the health measures studied among men. The hypotheses concerning parental deprivation and parental status incongruency were not substantiated by the data.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/22946/1/0000513.pd

Longitudinal study of ‘retraining’ non-maths specialist teachers to become capable, confident teachers of mathematics

One of the key problems to be solved in mathematics education in England is that the demand for mathematics teachers is far in excess of the supply. Acknowledging that there are simply too few mathematics teachers, the UK government has invested significantly in retraining programmes. These programmes ‘retrain’ out-of-field teachers, that is, teachers of other subjects or from other phases, to teach secondary mathematics. The increased mathematical demand of the reformed GCSE courses coupled with the expectation that most post-16 students will engage with some mathematics (studying for A and AS levels, a Core Maths qualification or re-sitting GCSE) means many more teachers of mathematics will be needed. We consider the viability of a retraining course as an effective way of alleviating the problem of the lack of well qualified teachers for mathematics. In this four-year longitudinal study, we followed teachers during their year of ‘retraining’ and in the succeeding years. Once a participant completes their part-time one-year course, the teacher is considered ‘retrained’. However, we conclude that without ongoing professional development involving collaborative support retraining courses alone can have little impact on the problem of the lack of competent and confident teachers of mathematics in the secondary sector

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P &lt; 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely