Ernest R. House

• University of Colorado Boulder

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 a...

This chapter focuses on evaluations conducted through a social justice lens. Ernest House, who is located on the valuing branch of the Evaluation Theory Tree, focuses on justice as equality. He examines the Women Affirming Motherhood program description and considers what approaches might lead to an egalitarian evaluation that helps the program in...

Racial framing can have strong effects on programs, policies, and even evaluations. Racial framing developed as a justification for the exploitation of minorities and has been a primary causal factor in the persistence of racism. By being aware of its pattern, structure, origins, and how racial framing generates effects, we can significantly reduce...

The book Evaluating with Validity (House, 1980) broadened the evaluation field's conception of validity by contending that evaluations should be true, coherent, and just. Untrue, incoherent, and unjust evaluations are invalid. The working ideas were argument, coherence, and politics. Truth is the attainment of arguments soundly made, beauty is the...

The conflicting interests of evaluators are biasing the findings of some evaluations and experiments, even technically rigorous studies. One improvement would be to emphasize evaluator and investigator conflict-of-interest threats in conceptions of validity. Such discussions could suggest ways to assess and avoid conflicts of interest. I explore th...

Drug studies are often cited as the best exemplars of evaluation design. However, many of these studies are seriously biased in favor of positive findings for the drugs evaluated, even to the point where dangerous effects are hidden. In spite of using randomized designs and double blinding, drug companies have found ways of producing the results th...

The Bush administration has systematically suppressed and distorted scientific findings to conform to its ideological agenda. Unfortunately, this practice has carried into educational research and evaluation, including the Institute of Education Sciences' What Works Clearing Clearinghouse, a unit that purports to screen studies that are "scientific...

Most research on school reform over the past several decades is characterized by three perspectives-the technological, political, and cultural (House, 1979; House, 1981). Studies based on these three perspectives account for a vast amount of the scholarly literature. An adequate understanding of school reform necessarily involves all three perspect...

Judging evaluations on the basis of their potential for democratic deliberation includes consideration of three interrelated criteria: inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation.

One way of resolving the quantitative versus qualitative methods dispute is to recognize that evaluation has a special content and that this content is more important than the methodologies.

The American Evaluation Association's succinct Guiding Principles for Evaluators quietly establish new boundaries for addressing ethical problems of the profession.

Even our most complex, scientific conceptions of evaluation are strongly influenced by underlying, deep-seated metaphors.

Evaluation methodology itself has sometimes led, in complex and subtle ways, to systematic injustices. The main source of error lies in our standard conception of causation, which is inadequate and incorrect.

The handling of potential stakeholder bias distinguishes evaluation theorists from one another and from practitioners.

Many evaluators already implement the principles we explicate here without any urging from us. They have developed their own approaches, their own intuitions, and their own robust senses of justice. Nonetheless, such principles are too important to leave to chance or intuition all the time. It may help to have a justification and checklist to remin...

In the 1970s Stake offered a rationale for representing the perspectives of stakeholders, which was liberating and highly influential, though his insistence that evaluative claims are subjective left responsive evaluators in an arbitrary posture.

Inappropriate racial categorizations of minorities have routinely infected evaluations and social research. By adhering to principles of democracy, evaluators can avoid such damaging effects in their work. Specifically, they should be aware of historical miscategorizations and engage in inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation which includes minoritie...

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 abilit...

Summary Evaluations should be independent in terms of being able to arrive at impartial conclusions. They must be seen as being credible if they are to fulfil this function. Their impartiality is derived from using appropriate scientific methodology and by being protected from political interference. Within the government, evaluation offices should...

A large government market has developed in evaluation over the past few decades. Governments let contracts to conduct evaluation studies, and these contracts shape the studies. Such contracting does not follow the idealized image of open markets. Rather, a few firms conduct most studies because of the dynamics of the contracting process. If we are...

Indeed, as we now see with painful clearness, we have, in the long run, for the maintenance of our pre-eminent industrial position in the world, nothing to depend on except the brains of our people. Public education has, therefore, insensibly come to be regarded not as a matter of philanthropy undertaken for the sake of the individual children bene...

Transaction-cost economics provides a framework for appraising educational reforms, i.e., deciding whether these reforms are likely to succeed in the “real life” of schools. This framework conceives of reform as a contract between reformers and stake-holders (teachers, students, parents), and these transactions are marked by bounded rationality, op...

The field of program evaluation has expanded rapidly over the past three decades so that evaluation of programs is standard practice in many government agencies. One development is that evaluation activities have moved inside large government agencies with the establishment of internal evaluation staffs, procedures and policies. This study examined...

Combining and weighting (synthesizing) different values, criteria, methods, measures, and interests depend heavily on content and context.

An optimistic view of the potential of evaluation to be a force for social improvement is presented. The most important unfinished task for evaluation may be to expand the logic of value judgments. In addition, the social usefulness of evaluation will depend on its credibility and the professionalism of evaluators. (SLD)

This paper suggests methodologies and guidelines appropriate for evaluating projects in the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Program. The paper aims to help projects carry out their evaluations, assist the Javits staff in determining the success of the evaluations, and aid in long-range program planning. (JDD)

John Dewey attempted to connect knowledge and reality through a naturalized epistemology but produced an anthropomorphic ontology in which things are shaped too much by the mind. Many of Dewey's ideas are still relevant, but taken as an intact set of ideas, they are not applicable to the world of today. (SLD)

The main differences between pragmatism and scientific realism seem to focus on the certainty of knowledge. Pragmatists contend that one can never be entirely certain of one's beliefs, whereas scientific realists argue that progress has been, and can be, made in explaining things about the world. (SLD)

Disputes in educational research over the past few decades have resulted in part from an inadequate conception of the nature of science itself. Developments in the philosophy of science have led to a new understanding–scientific realism–that has promise of resolving many longstanding dilemmas. At the core of the "standard view" of science is the in...

The authors examine inferences made by a beginning teacher and illustrate that traditional notions of validity as presented by Cronbach and Cook and Campbell are inadequate for judging their validity. These traditional notions of validity depend on a regularity theory of causation, although Cronbach's and Cook and Campbell's particular conceptions...

In his influential indictment of the Great Society, Charles Murray focused upon young black males being unemployed as the result of government programs. He is correct in stating that the employment problems of young black males have worsened since 1965 but wrong in asserting that older black males and white males had no employment problems. Labor f...

* Prologue A Generous Revolution * The Kennedy Transition * The System Is to Blame * Implementing the Elite Wisdom Being Poor, Being Black: 19501980 * Poverty * Employment * Wages and Occupations * Education * Crime * The Family * The View from 1966 Interpreting The Data * The Scoial Scientists and the Great Experiment * Incentives to Fail I: Maxim...

The evaluators of Push/Excel assumed that it was a systematically developed program with measurable outcomes, not a charismatically inspired movement whose effects would be hard to pin down. As a result, neither the program nor the evaluation approach used were adequately tested.

There are several fundamentally different approaches to evaluation, but all require that the evaluation be perceived as being fair.

'The current evaluation scene is marked by vitality and disorder', according to Ernest House. This book brings order to the field by examining its foundations, and criticising eight basic models, including systems analysis, the behavioural objectives approach, and the case study. House then argues for the standards of validity which he feels are ne...

The results of a program designed to determine the extent to which elemental boron and boron containing fillers added to the matrix resin of graphite/epoxy composites prevent the release of graphite fibers when the composites are exposed to fire and impact conditions are described. The fillers evaluated were boron, boron carbide and aluminum boride...

Awareness of the three analytical perspectives on educational innovation leads to better understanding of educational change processes and better innovation strategies and policies. The three perspectives--technological, political, and cultural--are "screens" of facts, values, and presuppositions through which analysts view innovation. From the tec...