Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative - Evaluation Training and Technical Assistance

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SSHS) Initiative is broad, complex, and has a distinct emphasis on collaboration at the local level. These features present local evaluators with unique opportunities and difficult challenges. In the face of these opportunities and challenges, efforts were made to provide limited evaluation technical assistance and training in conjunction with existing meetings for the 2002 and 2003 SSHS cohorts. These efforts have been successful, earning high levels of satisfaction from participants, as well as requests for additional targeted evaluation technical assistance and training. This proposal expands on these earlier efforts, and details a plan to provide comprehensive and targeted evaluation technical assistance and training to the 2004 cohort of SSHS sites. The main goals of this project are to improve the consistency and quality of local evaluation efforts in order to help sites improve the implementation and sustainability of their programs. Workshops, electronic resource sharing, and site visits will be used to deliver comprehensive evaluation technical assistance and training in pursuit of these goals. Progress toward objectives will be measured through surveys of local evaluators, Project Directors, Federal Project Officers, and site management teams, as well as through a review of written evaluation plans. NCA/NCF