Conclusion
The present evaluation procedures are useful if looked at as secondary data; if they are seen as broad and essentially complementary to the main business of schooling — student learning, and not as the primary outcome of schooling.
When they are seen as direct or primary representations of the quality of programs, they are fraudulent and misleading. Moreover, they are dangerous to the humanistic image of man and our evolving understanding of the learning process.
It is the heightening of this danger, currently being fostered by federal grant programs, accountability movements, industrial focus, and the national testing program, that makes it crucial to take a stand, now.
We who are engaged in schooling activity are being made over by the pressures of our contemporary milieu. As I see it at present, the evaluation signs of the times can only lead, in the long run, to a process whereby we shall become middlemen technicians in schools that perform a service-training function.
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Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina (Greensboro).
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Macdonald, J.B. An evaluation of evaluation. Urban Rev 7, 3–14 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02223199
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02223199