Abstract:

The impact evaluation of PK-12 educational programs in the United States not only started early in practice, with a relatively solid foundation, but also has developed into an important type of educational scientific research and the evidence source for the evidence-based educational reform at present, accumulating a lot of relatively mature practical experience. After thematically analyzing the text of 25 high-quality evaluation research, this research found that its practical experience is as follows. First of all, adequate evaluation funding is the first prerequisite for evaluation. The funding support comes from government and other sources, the raising is a collective action of wisdom, and the allocation runs through the entire evaluation process. Secondly, professional evaluators are the core input of evaluation. The evaluators come from professional organizations such as universities and colleges, and appropriate evaluators will be carefully selected and determined based on many factors, and there are currently three types of evaluator role positioning, namely, internal evaluators, external evaluators, and evaluators who collaborate internally and externally. Thirdly, scientific evaluation conducting is the key process of evaluation. The evaluation planning usually determines the evaluation type and questions. The evaluation design will clarify the theoretical basis, evaluation methods and outcome measures. And the evaluation implementation will attach great importance to sample recruitment, intervention implementation and data collecting. Fourthly, utility fruit is an important output of evaluation. The evaluation findings will be properly analyzed and reasonably explained. The evaluation results will be written by specifications and presented in various ways. And the evaluation products will be vigorously disseminated and used effectively. In addition, while striving to improve its quality, the impact evaluation of PK-12 educational programs in the U.S. has also begun to burst out new practical trends.

Key words: PK-12 education in the U.S., Every Student Succeeds Act, evidence-based reform in education, program impact evaluation, educational experiment research, thematic text analysis