Education

A partnership of the San Marcos Unified School District (SMUSD), Cal State University, San Marcos (CSUSM) and the Leichtag Family Foundation, PACE Promise aims to focus students and their families on college at an early stage, prepare students for the rigor of college work and improve access, retention and college completion for underrepresented students.

In spring of 2010 BTW worked with PACE Promise to create a theory of change to refine their program strategies and develop an evaluation plan that will demonstrate the program’s impact over time.

BTW was commissioned by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA) to assess the effectiveness of using their annual reports and deliverables to create greater awareness and action about education reform in California. As a research institute, IDEA provides research and policy analysis tools so that stakeholders can take action with legislators and other state leaders.

The evaluation will focus on investigating the extent to which IDEA’s recent outreach efforts galvanized key stakeholders and strengthened public engagement to invest in a public education system that ensures access for all students, specifically around the goals of:

• improving the understanding of the recession’s impact on California’s K–12 schools;
• contributing to statewide conversations about the importance of data-driven decisions in education; and
• highlighting the need to plan for finance policy reform.

BTW was commissioned by Jobs for the Future to research effective state and institutional policies related to developmental education for adults. BTW is developing case studies of high-performing community colleges in key states, and will produce an overarching policy research brief on effective state and institutional policies to support a data-driven improvement process for states.  The goal is to understand how to promote effective education policies and practices in order to improve the success rates of students who begin in developmental education.

The Walton Family Foundation supports projects and organizations that are making a positive difference for individuals, communities and the environment through its investment in three focus areas: systemic K–12 education reform, freshwater and marine conservation, and quality of life initiatives in the Foundation’s home region, including the Delta region of Arkansas, Mississippi and Northwest Arkansas.

The Walton Family Foundation has engaged BTW specifically around its policy and advocacy grantmaking efforts within the education reform portfolio. BTW is partnering with the Foundation to develop a framework that clarifies the expectations for its policy and advocacy investments, including specific outcome measures linked to key strategies. In addition, BTW will help create a process and tools to help the Foundation and its grantees measure the impact of their work.

The Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice (IREPP) is an independent center housed at the Stanford University School of Education. It conducts multidisciplinary research to improve education policy and practice. IREPP’s aim is to train a new generation of education policy researchers equipped to meet the challenge.

IREPP hired BTW to assess its accomplishments during two years of Hewlett Foundation support and strengthen its transition from start-up to fixture, at Stanford and in the field.

In the course of assessment, BTW helped IREPP identify upcoming opportunities for growth and challenges to its capacity. Our evaluation allowed IREPP to reinforce its mission, establish a greater presence on campus and enhance its role in the field of education research.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an audacious goal: to double the number of low-income young adults with a postsecondary credential by 2025. In 2009, BTW partnered with the Foundation to develop a comprehensive evaluation plan to measure the impact of its work toward that goal.

Together, BTW and the Foundation developed a vision and laid the groundwork for such a plan. Over the course of these studies, we clarified the Foundation’s postsecondary education theory of action, refined its strategies and developed a plan that will launch nearly a dozen independent evaluation efforts.

The findings will be published periodically beginning in 2011.

The Advancement Project (AP) employs a signature consensus-building process to support local and state policy development in California. The results are tangible: genuine, multi-stakeholder reform across traditionally polarizing policy areas. AP asked BTW to evaluate that process and gauge how it was influencing changes in education policy.

We began by developing a framework for assessment, and then tested its efficacy in AP’s Early Childhood Education Water Cooler meetings. Based on the success of that experience, AP has engaged BTW to continue evaluating its education work over three years, focusing on K–12 facilities and finance reform.

The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce is a leading voice in education and workforce development in California. In an effort to better understand how its own work is increasing business support for education reform, the Chamber approached BTW.

BTW provided the Chamber with impartial feedback about the capacity and impact of its efforts to galvanize California business leaders to improve educational outcomes. We prepared an “Assessment Memo” for project staff, outlining successes over the previous two years and recommending steps for even greater effectiveness moving forward.

The Chamber has been using these recommendations to refine its strategies and focus for greater impact, and has asked BTW to continue documenting its efforts in the future.

The Educational Network, a division of the public broadcasting station KQED, was curious about the impact of its education training programs on participating educators and their students. BTW worked with KQED over a five-year period to build a growing picture of the programs’ measurable effects.

Each year of the study, BTW carefully focused its evaluation to prioritize key questions, assessing training programs underway and incorporating results from the previous year. BTW’s plan provided progressively instructive data about the programs’ impact, and KQED was able to leverage those data to secure additional funding for its educational programming.

Over time, based on its experience with BTW, KQED adjusted its training programs to make the most of limited resources and evaluate its own efforts, By the time BTW’s role had ended, KQED was in a position to monitor and build on the Network’s impact on its own, using the evaluation tools and systems developed by BTW during the study.

The goal of NewSchools Venture Fund is to transform public education for underserved children. To do this, NewSchools supports education entrepreneurs whose for-profit and nonprofit ventures have the potential to dramatically improve the nation’s school systems.

In Summer 2004, NewSchools engaged BTW to assess how well its Venture Fund supported its first portfolio of investee organizations. We interviewed stakeholders, integrated companion survey data and presented NewSchools with an incisive report.

BTW’s findings helped guide NewSchools’ investments, approach and focus into the future.