Founded in 2006, the Shaffer Evaluation Group works with education partners -- school districts, colleges and universities, government agencies, and nonprofits -- to develop educational programs that address and correct long-standing inequities in education so that all children and youth can excel.
 
Our expertise in education is deep -- our research staff also brings professional experience as K-12 teachers, college faculty, and/or school district administrators, which informs our program design and capacity building work with school districts and postsecondary institutions. Our team members are grounded in a participatory approach to evaluation that includes stakeholder input in program design, evaluation planning, data collection, analysis, and reporting. The participatory approach supports active involvement of stakeholders that facilitates both evaluation implementation and use of evaluation findings by the project staff and the educational institution.
 
We also offer evaluation capacity building services to assist our partners in improving their ability to measure and strengthen the impact of their professional learning initiatives. Workshops focus on valid assessment instruments that are available for low or no cost, as well as other available resources to assist in developing a plan for documenting and monitoring the effectiveness of professional learning efforts and their impact on student performance outcomes.