Evaluative Inquiry: Using Evaluation to Promote Student Success - Tapa dura

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Beverly A. Parsons is Executive Director of InSites in Colorado. InSites, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, assists education and social service systems through research, evaluation, and planning. She focuses on the evaluation and planning of systemic change. Her evaluation work has involved initiatives to restructure and reculture pre­school through university education systems as well as bring about reform in spe­cific content areas (mathematics, science, humanities, arts, and world languages). She has provided evaluation services to the National Staff Development Council, the NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and numerous other foundations and organizations and has worked on projects in Japan, China, and South Africa, as well as throughout the United States. During her 10-year affiliation with the Denver-based Education Commission of the States (a national interstate compact assisting governors, legislators, and state education and business leaders to improve education through leadership and pol­icy), she led ECS’s comprehensive effort to bring about fundamental changes in the education system at school, district, state, and university levels in partnership with the Coalition of Essential Schools. In her earlier years at ECS she served as Director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Much of her early knowledge and skills in assessment, evaluation, and research were honed at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Oregon, where she served as Director of the Assessment and Measurement Program and while with the Shannon County School District, serving the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She has published and led seminars on systems change issues and has spoken extensively about them to practitioners and policymakers. She has been on the board of the National Council on Measurement in Education and co-chair of the Clus­ter/Multi-Site Evaluation Topical Interest Group of the American Evaluation Asso­ciation. Her doctorate in educational research and evaluation is from the University of Colorado.