Upcoming Advocacy Evaluation Breakfast
Join us on Thursday, November 21st for our next Advocacy Evaluation breakfast, “Listen Up! Evaluating International Aid Efforts by Listening to Aid Recipients.” Dayna Brown, Director of The Listening Project at CDA and co-author of Time To Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid, will join us to discuss the evaluative potential of CDA’s approach to gathering community perspectives. This is sure to be a fascinating breakfast so RSVP here ASAP!
Strategery, Part Deux
Last week, we wrote about Beth Kanter’s reflections on a brainstorming session about digital strategy, but what about plain old strategy? A new book (aptly) called Strategy: A History by Sir Lawrence Freedman tackles that question. The key takeaway from this 630-page behemoth, according to this Economist review, is “that although it is usually better to have some kind of strategy than not, unless you are prepared to adapt it as circumstances change it is unlikely to do you much good.” In the evaluation context, it’s important to have the flexibility to respond to shifting environments and outcomes.
Metrics and Testing
The Brookings Institution came out with a new education report titled “Standardized Testing and the Common Core Standards: You Get What You Pay For?” which underscores the need for high-quality (and affordable) tests to gauge student progress under these new standards. Evaluators know that establishing metrics ain’t useful if you have no way of collecting data. Take, for example, their event yesterday on learning metrics around the world. Brookings released the recommendations of their Learning Metrics Task Force which was charged with developing ideas to measure education outcomes across countries. Big task indeed.
