Cybersecurity Pathways for Military-Connected Students

With cybersecurity becoming one of the world’s fastest growing STEM fields, Newport News Public Schools has been awarded a grant by DODEA to create a pathway for military-connected students into cybersecurity. Shaffer Evaluation Group will provide evaluation support across the term of the grant period.

Focusing on pre-K through 8th grade the school district will integrate computational thinking, problem solving, and digital literacy into curriculum, provide additional in-class technology and robots, and extracurricular opportunities for more in-depth cybersecurity curriculum. This project includes a preschool, 4 elementary schools, and 2 middle schools. Professional learning will increase teachers’ confidence integrating STEM curriculum and will reinforce math instruction and curriculum to promote computational thinking and problem solving skills required in cyber literacy. A successful program will show student growth in the Computation and Estimation strands of the Virginia Math Standards of Learning, and growth in the Expressions and Operations strands of the Virginia Algebra I Standards of Learning assessment.

Patricia Moore Shaffer joins Eastern Evaluation Research Society Board

Patricia Moore Shaffer joined the board of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society (EERS), the oldest professional society for program evaluators in the United States. Founded in 1978, EERS remains a vibrant contributor to program evaluation practice and theory. As a local affiliate of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), the purpose of EERS is to promote key goals of the profession in our region:

• Growth of the evaluation profession through information sharing and educational activities

• Use of innovative and appropriate evaluation methodologies

• High quality evaluation through fostering research, developing and improving professional competencies, and disseminating and utilizing results.

EERS convenes an annual conference for evaluation professionals, and operates a website to provide information about that conference and other activities of interest to evaluators.

NEW: Evaluating Professional Development Workshops

The Shaffer Evaluation Group works in partnership with school districts, colleges, universities, educational agencies, government, and non-profit organizations to build successful programs informed by evidence. As accountability expectations have continued to increase, we are increasingly asked by our partners to support Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB), which Stockdill, Balzeman, and Compton (2002) define as “the intentional work to continuously create and sustain organizational processes that make quality evaluation and its uses routine.”

For our school district partners, expectations related to professional learning programs have been redefined. According to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed into law in December 2015, professional development activities are “sustained, intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data driven, and classroom focused” (S. 1177-295). ESSA also notes that professional development activities should be “regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievements, with findings of the evaluations used to improve the quality of professional development” (ESSA SEC 8002).

In an effort to support the ongoing work of our partners, the Shaffer Evaluation Group is pleased to offer a selection of targeted workshop options to assist our partners in improving their ability to measure and strengthen the impact of their professional learning initiatives on teacher beliefs, dispositions, and practices. Workshop participants will learn about 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. Workshops are available in a half-day or full-day format.

Workshop outcomes include:

• increased facility and understanding of high-quality data usage to measure impacts of professional learning on classroom practices and student performance outcomes;

• increased skill in developing measurable outcomes for school-based initiatives;

• increased skill in identifying and/or developing tools for measuring program outcomes;

• increased knowledge of how to utilize instructional and performance data to determine the effectiveness of initiatives to identify professional learning targets;

• increased awareness of effective, appropriate, and feasible strategies for data collection; and

• development of a draft professional development plan.

Call us today for more information about planning a workshop for your school district.