The Harvard Project on Schooling and Children recently received $464,000 from the William T. Grant Foundation to expand its postdoctoral fellowship program in evaluating programs for children. The fellowship program seeks to contribute to knowledge about what programs work for which children and why by developing evaluation techniques that result in rigorous, reliable, and creditable evaluations of complex social interventions.

Programs that seek to address children's needs often encompass a complex variety of interventions at multiple levels of a system, such as health-community-social services. Innovative programs that support children's well-being now involve a much broader ecology of individuals and institutions, including business, families, and community associations, as well as volunteer, health, and government agencies. Carol Weiss, professor of education and faculty director of the Post-doctoral Fellowships in Evaluating Programs for Children observes, "During this time of great change and diminishing financial resources, measuring the success or failure of educational and social programs for children looms as an issue of immense significance. In other words, the issue is evaluation."

The Harvard Project on Schooling and Children (HPSC) has begun to address these problems by focusing the resources of the University on the urgent issues of children's ability to learn and thrive. In September 1997, the first cohort of postdoctoral Fellows in Evaluating Programs for Children arrived at Harvard. Supported by the Spencer Foundation, these four fellows are pursuing research related to evaluating educational programs. The W.T. Grant funds will allow an expansion of the postdoctoral fellowship program to fellows with backgrounds and interests in child and youth development, interventions on behalf of children and families, and children's health. Two applicants each year for the next three years will be selected for the program.

During their two years in the program, fellows will participate in a variety of activities, including coursework, teaching, research, and specially designed seminars. Fellows will also join the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children's Evaluation Task Force, a group of 18 Harvard faculty members from various schools who have been working on evaluation issues since 1995. Opportunities to participate in lively interactive discussions and mutual learning experiences with Evaluation Task Force members, other faculty interested in children's development, and community practitioners will ensure a truly interdisciplinary, integrated experience. Faculty mentoring is a key component of the fellowship program. Each month, fellows will join a group of local evaluators who are studying programs serving children at the "Voices from the Field" seminar organized by the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children. According to current postdoctoral fellow Tracy Huebner, " 'Voices from the Field' brings perspectives from the field into academic conversations about theory and methodology. It is a great opportunity for me to get a solid foundation in the practical challenges of community programs."

HPSC is one of five interfaculty initiatives created in 1993 in response to President Neil L. Rudenstine's call to marshal the resources of Harvard University to address pressing societal problems including improving children's well-being. Professors Mary Jo Bane of the Kennedy School of Government and Richard Elmore of the Graduate School of Education serve as faculty co-chairs. HPSC's mandate is to bring together scholars with multiple perspectives and methodologies, from fields as diverse as medicine, sociology, education, statistics, organizational studies, and public health, to stimulate holistic understanding of what helps children grow to healthy, responsible adulthood. Katherine K. Merseth, executive director of HPSC, states, "We believe that the exchange of ideas between fellows with disciplinary training and those with specific evaluation experience will serve to both promote interest in program evaluation within the disciplines and to facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to evaluation. This fellowship program already is helping to produce a cadre of scholars who will push the frontiers of interdisciplinary evaluation of social and educational programs for children in universities, research institutes, government and community agencies, and professional schools across the country. With the additional support from W.T. Grant, we will be able to do so much more."

For more information on the Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program in Evaluating Programs for Children or for more information about the Harvard Project on Schooling and Children, please e-mail hpsc@harvard.edu or call 496-4938.