A School Board's Response to an Ethnographic Evaluation: Or, Whose Evaluation is this Anyway?

This chapter explores the politics surrounding the rejection of an ethnographic evaluation I presented to a school board. As the evaluator, I address the ethical questions that emerged because of both the political context and the report’s ethnographic character. I discuss the context of the evaluation and some of the contemporary social and political issues in ethnographic evaluation. I offer a combination of social critique and interpretive anthropology as a way to understand the philosophical issues inherent in ethnographic evaluation ethics.