ABSTRACT
Although my role here today is to be a discussant, I feel compelled to share my strong feelings about the need for evaluators with enhanced skills to assist communities and individuals to improve their quality of life. Many federally funded projects have “lived or died” because of the inappropriate or too narrow focus in their evaluations. For example, the early evaluations of the Head Start Program largely focused on raising the aptitude of children enrolled in the national program without equal concern for the other critical goals of the program. In most instances, such goals as the improvement in the nutrition and health status of the children, language development, and social skills were given less attention. To be sure, there were prominent evaluators who pointed out the shortcomings of the early evaluations of large national community-based programs in general (e.g., Campbell & Erlebacher, 1970) and Head Start in particular (e.g., Gramlich & Koshel, 1975; Rivlin & Timpane, 1975; Timpane, 1976).
