For the Sake of Children

Seven named as postdoctoral fellows in evaluating programs for children

The Harvard Children's Initiative, an Interfaculty Initiative, will expand its Postdoctoral Fellowship in Evaluating Programs for Children this fall, with the addition of seven new fellows.

The Spencer Foundation will support five of the fellows, and additional funding provided by the William T. Grant Foundation will support two of the fellows. The 1998-2000 fellows were selected based on their commitment to improving the lives of children by examining the evaluation methods used to determine the success or failure of youth programs. The incoming fellows will be in residence at the Initiative and will collaborate with Harvard faculty from across the University, with community organizations, and with other evaluators to help broaden the scope of childrens' program evaluation. The new fellows are:

Kathryn Boudett received a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She employs quantitative methods in her dissertation, "In Search of a Second Chance: The Consequences of GED Certification, Education and Training for Young Women Without Traditional High School Diplomas," and in published papers with Graduate School of Education faculty members John Willett and Dick Murnane. She plans to use the fellowship period to learn more about how qualitative methodologies interplay with quantitative methods in theory-based evaluations. She hopes to apply these insights to an educational innovation project in Boston/Cambridge, possibly involving a charter school.

Ana Cristina de Souza received her doctorate last March in maternal and child health from the Harvard School of Public Health, where she also earned a master's in quantitative methods after working as a pediatric dentist in her native Brazil. For her doctorate she conducted a comprehensive evaluation of a Brazilian community child survival program. Currently, she works with the Massachusetts Department of Health on a comprehensive evaluation of the Teen Challenge Fund Initiative, a pregnancy prevention program, and with a team of researchers at SPH to evaluate some components of the Healthy Start program. During the fellowship period, she plans to evaluate a community-based nutritional assistance program for at-risk infants, children, and pregnant women, and of the impact of health and nutritional factors on the learning capacity of school-age children.

Eliot Levine received his Ph.D. in clinical and community psychology from the University of Maryland in May. In his doctoral dissertation, "Management for Educational Success: A Grounded Theory of Low-Income Latino Parent Involvement in their Children's Education," Levine studied Latino families in the Boston area. He has worked on numerous research projects including a longitudinal evaluation of an intensive early intervention study for children from low-income families. For his fellowship research, he plans to evaluate an ongoing parent involvement initiative in the Boston area, preferably a program that seeks to increase collaboration with low-income, culturally diverse parents of middle or high school students in alternative educational settings such as charter and pilot schools.

Pamela Perry expects to graduate this summer from University of California, Berkeley, with a doctorate in sociology. Her dissertation, "Beginning to See the White," is an ethnographic study that compares racial consciousness and identities among white youth in an urban versus a suburban high school. Perry is interested in critically evaluating the processes and practices in schools that effectively foster interracial harmony, acceptance, and integration. She is currently on the national advisory board of a project that seeks to understand the successes and failures of school desegregation efforts by listening to what children have to say about their own experiences. During the fellowship period, she hopes to analyze the effects of different types of multicultural school programs on white youth in integrated schools.

Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas earned a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University in 1997 with a dissertation called "'La Patria es Valor y Sacrificio': Nationalist Ideologies, Cultural Authenticity, and Community Building among Puerto Ricans in Chicago," an ethnographic research project that explored the relationships between Puerto Rican nationalist identities, academic success, and social change. Ramos is interested in developing adequate evaluation strategies for alternative programs that encourage minority youth to stay in school, abandon gangs, and attend college. During the fellowship period, she plans to examine the connection between educational attainment and identity politics among Latinos in Boston high schools, and to strengthen her background in quantitative research methods.

Sean Reardon will receive a one-year fellowship made available by the departure of first cohort fellow Patricia Rogers, who will return to Australia this August. Reardon received the Ed.D. in administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard's Graduate School of Education in 1997. He is currently a researcher and instructor at the Graduate School of Education, where he teaches a course on the sociology of adolescence. His primary interest is community-based programs that aim to understand and improve the lives of adolescents. During the fellowship period, he hopes to find ways to synthesize ethnographic, narrative data on the effects of community-based initiatives with quantitative data such as survey, census, and school and police records.

Stuart Yeh expects to graduate in June from Stanford with a doctorate in education. His dissertation, "Empowering Education: Teaching Argumentative Writing to Cultural Minority Middle School Students," involved the use of quasi-experimental and case study methods to evaluate approaches for teaching argumentative writing. He was involved in the design and implementation of evaluations of the Accelerated Schools Project, a nationwide school reform initiative, and of model education, employment, and training programs for the economically disadvantaged at the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. He is interested in blending program theory with experimental and case study methods to evaluate curricula and teaching, and plans to continue his research on writing and literacy programs during the fellowship.

These fellows will join Timothy Hacsi, Tracy Huebner, Anthony Petrosino, who have just completed their first year of the two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship. Tim Hacsi is continuing his work on the history of educational evaluation, addressing issues such as class size, bilingual education, Title I funding, and other topics. Anthony Petrosino is examining ways to improve meta-analysis and to use the technique to sharpen individual program evaluation. Tracy Huebner's fellowship work is specifically focused toward the innovative approaches involved in evaluating large-scale school reform efforts. Patricia Rogers, who departs in late August, is working with Associate Professor Gil Noam and the RALLY prevention program using new approaches to program theory that focus on both the mechanisms that lead to change and the contexts in which these mechanisms operate. All four fellows are currently working together on a project that examines various ways in which theory-based evaluation can improve evaluations of children's programs.

For more information about the fellowships, call 496-4938.