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The Fourth Edition of the bestselling Utilization-Focused Evaluation provides expert, detailed advice on conducting program evaluations from one of leading experts. Chock full of useful pedagogy—including a unique utilization-focused evaluation checklist—this book presents Michael Quinn Patton′s distinctive opinions based on more than thirty years of experience. Key Features of the Fourth Edition Provides thoroughly updated materials including more international content; new references; new exhibits and sidebars; and new examples, stories, and cartoons Includes follow-up exercises at the end of each chapter Features a utilization-focused evaluation checklist Gives greater emphasis on m...
Early results on election night suggested that Democrats had failed to make significant gains in the 2018 midterms. After all the votes were counted, a blue wave crashed on American electoral politics as Democrats won the House the Representatives and made significant gains at the state and local levels. In this book, Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik bring together respected journalists and academics from across the political spectrum to examine every facet of the 2018 election, and what its outcome portends for our national politics and the coming 2020 presidential election. In frank, accessible prose, each author offers insight that goes beyond the headlines, and dives into the underlying forces and shifts that drove the election from its earliest developments to its eventual conclusion, long after the polls closed. Contributions by Alan I. Abramowitz, Matt Barreto, David Byler, Rhodes Cook, James Hohmann, Theodore Johnson, Kyle Kondik, Albert Morales, Diana Owen, Madelaine Pisani, Joshua T. Putnam, Larry Sabato, Gary Segura, Emily C. Singer, Sean Trende, Michael Toner, and Karen Trainer.
Each year over a million newly-minted high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges and universities across the country. They do so often after a lengthy and almost always stressful selection process. Faced with growing evidence of declining standards, rising political correctness and spiraling costs, families feel more powerless than ever before – and question whether a college degree is really the key to the American dream. What is a parent to do? This book provides an answer. Higher education expert Anne Neal offers families a concise guide to finding the right college. Rejecting the notion that reputation is everything, this guide offers insightful chapters on curricula and teaching, campus and dorm life, freedom of thought and speech, and affordability – issues that are more and more in the news. Families are given a handy checklist of questions designed to help them zero in on key issues of quality and cost to ensure a college program that will provide the skills and knowledge needed for success after graduation.
For all the wrong reasons, a national spotlight is shining on Chicago. The city has become known for its violence, police abuse, parent and teacher unrest, population decline, and mounting municipal and pension debt. The underlying problem, contend Ed Bachrach and Austin Berg, is that deliberative democracy is dead in the city. Chicago is home to the last strongman political system in urban America. The mayor holds all the power, and any perceived checks on mayoral control are often proven illusory. Rash decisions have resulted in poor outcomes. The outrageous consequences of unchecked power are evident in government failures in elections, schools, fiscal discipline, corruption, public suppo...
In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorousempirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy. If, as DiMaggio shows, our newspapers and television news programs play a decisive role in determining what we think, and if, as he demonstrates convincingly, what the media give us is largely propaganda that supports an oppressive and undemocratic status quo, then it is incumbent upon us to make sure that they are responsive to the majority and not just the powerful and privileged few.
Glenn Beck, the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Reset, considers the hot-button issue of education in the US, exposing the weaknesses of the Common Core school curriculum and examining why liberal solutions fail. Public education is never mentioned in the constitution. Why? Because our founders knew that it was an issue for state and local governments—not the federal one. It’s not a coincidence that the more the federal government has inserted itself into public education over the years, the worse our kids have fared. Washington dangles millions of dollars in front of states and then tells them what they have to do to get it. It’s backdoor nationalization of education—...
This issue of New Directions for Evaluation looks back at the past twenty years of the American Evaluation Association, from its inception to current research, highlighting important moments and enduring issues in the discipline and profession of evaluation. The issue includes a very brief history of NDE--including the journal's purpose, the various foci, how the journal has operated, and such events as the change in the journal's name. The issue also looks at the substance of NDE over the past twenty years, including an analysis of the coverage of cultural diversity issues. But much of the issue is devoted to "greatest hits" chapters that have appeared in prior NDE issues, each of which is ...
This volume examines the problem of null or negative evaluation findings, a topic rarely discussed in the literature but all too commonplace in the experience of evaluators. The Southern California Center of Excellence on Youth Violence Prevention, housed in the Robert Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies at the University of California, Riverside, has taken up the challenge to discuss candidly evaluation efforts that can be described only as challenging. The individual chapters discuss a range of design, implementation, and analysis issues relevant not only to evaluation studies but also to interventions that can contribute to negative or null findings in the evaluation of an interv...
In this nonfiction thriller, a ProPublica investigative reporter connects the dots between backdoor deals and the spoils systems to provide the definitive account of how the COVID-19 pandemic was so catastrophically mishandled.
This book addresses Disney parks using performance theory. Few to no scholars have done this to date—an enormous oversight given the Disney parks’ similarities to immersive theatre, interpolation of guests, and dramaturgical construction of attractions. Most scholars and critics deny agency to the tourist in their engagement with the Disney theme park experience. The vast body of research and journalism on the Disney “Imagineers”—the designers and storytellers who construct the park experience—leads to the misconception that these exceptional artists puppeteer every aspect of the guest’s experience. Contrary to this assumption, Disney park guests find a range of possible reading strategies when they enter the space. Certainly Disney presents a primary reading, but generations of critical theory have established the variety of reading strategies that interpreters can employ to read against the text. This volume of twelve essays re-centers the park experience around its protagonist: the tourist.