DECEMBER 20, 2011

Third Edition of The Program Evaluation Standards by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation

The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (JCSEE), an American Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited evaluation standards developer, recently released the third edition of the Program Evaluation Standards, seventeen years after the previous revision. The new edition is organized around the same four dimensions of evaluation as previously (utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy), but it also goes beyond the work accomplished in previous editions by providing (according to the authors):

• extensive rationales for and connections among the individual standards;
• integrated illustrations of individual standards in concert with other related standards;
• illustrations of the roles played by contexts and cultures in all dimensions of evaluation quality;
• a new chapter, "Evaluation Accountability", that includes three standards highlighting the importance of summative and formative metaevaluation;
• comprehensive and thoroughly updated documentation lists for each dimension of quality;
• an updated glossary;
• appendices containing the previous standards statements (from 1981 and 1994) for scholars who want to conduct comparative research.

The JCSEE, a volunteer organization, intends on making the process of improving on this third edition more participatory, and plans on starting to recruit new task force leaders, members and other volunteers to contribute to the quality of the next edition, next year.

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