A literacy program review must focus primarily on students—what, how, and why they’re reading and writing—and secondarily on teachers. Other approaches to program evaluation, such as instructional rounds, focus primarily on teachers’ actions in the classroom. These approaches can be helpful when evaluating a targeted professional development initiative. However, I’ve found that, when reviewing a total literacy program, we must first look at students’ literacy itself. Only when we’ve developed a thorough understanding of their literacy should we turn our attention to the instruction that is supporting and shaping it. After all, we can’t evaluate the quality of instruction without knowing what students are actually doing with that instruction.

To draw valid conclusions about a literacy program, we must act as researchers first and then as evaluators. Acting as researchers means developing targeted research questions, designing research methods that align to those questions, and drawing conclusions based on the data produced through those methods. While researchers can never be fully neutral and objective, we can take measures to ensure we’re directing our attention deliberately, reflecting on and accounting for our biases, and assuming a non-judgmental stance when interacting with teachers and students. A research orientation helps us produce data we know can trust. After the research phase, we can take up a more evaluative stance as we review the data and develop recommendations. In my reviews, I employ a variety of research methods to answer the questions we develop together:

• Classroom observations

• Teacher interviews/focus groups

• Student interviews/focus groups

• Family surveys

• Student work review

• Environmental artifact review

• Curricular document review

• Analysis of assessment data

Deliberate partnership means we must make careful decisions about when and how to collaborate and when and how to work independently. Partnership is critical as I develop research questions for the program review; leaders know best which aspects of the total literacy program must be examined. During the research phase, however, I find it more effective to operate independently. That way, I can maximize the neutrality that comes with being an outsider. As I develop the evaluation, I reconnect with leaders, sharing a high-level overview of the findings and soliciting leaders’ reactions and perspectives before developing the final report and recommendations.

Recommendations are only useful if they take into account the school community’s existing realities, strengths, and areas of need. As educators and leaders, we know we can’t change everything we want to change all at once. I work with leaders to prioritize areas of need, distinguish between technical and adaptive changes, identify existing structures and strengths that can be leveraged, and lay out a series of steps leaders and teachers can take to make change.