Ray C. Rist

Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the "failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United States was industrializing and were later amplified when the Soviets and Japan were thought to be grinding down the competitive position of America. At the start of the twenty-first century, as we discuss globalization and maintaining our leadership position in the world economy, they are being heard again.The Urban School: A Factory for Failure challenges these assumptions about American education. Indeed, a basic premise of the book is that the American school system is working quite well-doing exactly what is expected of it. To wit, that the schools in the United States affirm, reflect, and reinforce the social inequalities that exist in the social structures of the society. Stated differently, the schools are not great engines for equalizing the existing social inequalities. Rather, they work to reinforce the social class differences that we have had in the past and continue to have in more pronounced ways at present.Rist uses both sociological and anthropological methods to examine life in one segregated African-American school in the mid-western United States. A classroom of some thirty children were followed from their first day of kindergarten through the second grade. Detailed accounts of the day-by-day process of sorting, stratifying, and separating the children by social class backgrounds demonstrates the means of ensuring that both the poor and middle-class students soon learned their appropriate place in the social hierarchy of the school. Instructional time, discipline, and teacher attention all varied by social class of the students, with those at the bottom of the ladder consistently receiving few positive rewards and many negative sanctions.When The Urban School was first published in 1973, the National School Boards Association called it one of the ten most influential books on American education for the year. It remains essential reading for educators, sociologists, and economists.

In the first section of this book, four chapters explore how evaluation can influence and interact with the change process in policy and institutional development. Wijayatilake recalls a convincing and riveting story about how evaluation was introduced in Sri-Lanka and what kind of striking results could be achieved in a few years through a progressive pragmatic approach and strong leadership. Wiesner reviews the role of evaluation in the formation of macroeconomic policy in Latin America and outlines the role of demand for improved results and performance and of the accountability from the politicians, the private sector and civil society and, in the end, the population. Dimitrov proposes a 7 step approach for tacking institutional Performance evaluation and applies it to the case of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank. Jaljouli addresses the challenge of the integration of development strategy and the evaluation process and uses Dubai as a case study. In the second section of this book, five chapters present a variety of lessons learnt and good practices in Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB). Heider presents a structured approach to capacity development working at three levels: individual training, institutional development, and an enabling environment and suggests moving from capacities to capabilities. Agrawal and Rao identify various factions influencing the use of evaluation results and show in the case of India how capacity building was used to increase this use. Andriantseheno addresses how an M and E system for a major development program can be set up as part of a programmatic approach using the case study of the Environment/Rural Development and Food Security program in Madagascar. Porter outlines the potential of the helping approaches an evaluation capacity development strategy and uses the Bana Barona/Abantwanu Bethu project in South Africa to prove his point. Clotteau et al. review major challenges in ECB and present a variety of ECB strategies to design and implement Results-Based National M and E systems, building upon a number of experiences in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The third section of the book discusses new perspectives on ECB. Picciotto outlines a path for the future of development evaluation on the basis of a review of emerging endogenous and exogenous trends. By surveying recent theoretical developments in ECB, Nielsen and Attström map the perspectives offered by the contributors in terms of scope, purpose, definitions, and methods and relate key findings and recommendations to the ECB framework offered by Heider’ chapter. Van den Berg illustrates how evaluation capacity has been developed and could be further developed in a critical area for the future, i.e. in environment and development. From a review of the first and second sections of the book, Dahlgren underlines that building up evaluation capacity requires not only competence and quality, but taking into account the political and institutional context, cost aspects, the relative importance between learning and accountability, and the differences and similarities between monitoring and evaluation. Finally, following a review of the same papers, McAllister explores the interface between the evaluation function and organizational leadership in setting results strategy and the limitation of results approaches as implemented by the international development community. Overall, the stimulating comparative analysis of the papers presented in sections 1 and 2, questions and own thoughts on perspectives for ECB in the future made by those senior evaluation specialists allow for a more thorough and nuanced book.

This comprehensive text is an essential tool for those involved in development evaluation. It presents concepts and procedures for evaluation in a development context. It provides procedures and examples on how to set up a monitoring and evaluation system, how to conduct participatory evaluations and do social mapping, and how to construct a 'rigorous' quasi-experimental design to answer an impact question. The book begins with a description of the context of development evaluation and how it arrived where it is today. It then discusses current issues driving development evaluation, such as the Millennium Development Goals and the move from simple project evaluations to the broader understandings of complex evaluations. The topics of implementing 'Results-based Measurement and Evaluation' and constructing a 'Theory of Change' are emphasized throughout the text. Next, the authors take the reader down 'the road to results', presenting procedures for evaluating projects, programs, and policies by using a 'Design Matrix' to help map the process. This road includes: determining the overall approach; formulating questions; selecting designs; developing data collection instruments; choosing a sampling strategy; and, planning data analysis for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method evaluations. The book also includes discussions on conducting complex evaluations, how to manage evaluations, how to present results, and ethical behavior - including principles, standards, and guidelines. The final chapter discusses the future of development evaluation.

Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the "failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United States was industrializing and were later amplified when the Soviets and Japan were thought to be grinding down the competitive position of America. At the start of the twenty-first century, as we discuss globalization and maintaining our leadership position in the world economy, they are being heard again.The Urban School: A Factory for Failure challenges these assumptions about American education. Indeed, a basic premise of the book is that the American school system is working quite well-doing exactly what is expected of it. To wit, that the schools in the United States affirm, reflect, and reinforce the social inequalities that exist in the social structures of the society. Stated differently, the schools are not great engines for equalizing the existing social inequalities. Rather, they work to reinforce the social class differences that we have had in the past and continue to have in more pronounced ways at present.Rist uses both sociological and anthropological methods to examine life in one segregated African-American school in the mid-western United States. A classroom of some thirty children were followed from their first day of kindergarten through the second grade. Detailed accounts of the day-by-day process of sorting, stratifying, and separating the children by social class backgrounds demonstrates the means of ensuring that both the poor and middle-class students soon learned their appropriate place in the social hierarchy of the school. Instructional time, discipline, and teacher attention all varied by social class of the students, with those at the bottom of the ladder consistently receiving few positive rewards and many negative sanctions.When The Urban School was first published in 1973, the National School Boards Association called it one of the ten most influential books on American education for the year. It remains essential reading for educators, sociologists, and economists.

Ray Rist uses his skills as a participant-observer in the classroom to make us understand the first few years of school experience of one group of children.One of the traditional sources of American pride has always been the upward mobility afforded its citizens through mass public education. Regardless of income, race, or background, all children are supposedly given an equal opportunity to learn and thereby advance into a share of the good life. In this longitudinal study of a group of black children attending a de facto segregated urban school, Ray C. Rist demonstrates that this cherished belief is unfortunately another myth that desperately needs to be reevaluated.The study on which the report is based was conducted over a three-year period in one of the St. Louis public schools. Beginning with the initial kindergarten experience of the children, it follows them with day-to-day observations through the middle of second grade. The subtle (and not-so-subtle) "sorting mechanisms," which begin with the children's table assignments the first week of kindergarten, are traced from year to year, teacher to teacher, until they have become, as Dr. Rist observes, an almost immutable caste system. Though these classifications are ostensibly formed according to the intellectual ability of the children, Dr. Rist observes, an almost immutable caste system. Though these classifications are ostensibly formed according to the intellectual ability of the children, Dr. Rist points out how the teachers (all of whom are black) use such cues as social class, dress, speech, and social behavior to sort the children into groups. That the children quickly learn to use the same cues in their own interactions is also demonstrated. Much of the report contains actual dialogue between the teachers and the children which vividly captures the flavor of the classroom situation. Dr. Rist writes with warmth and compassion for the children caught in a society that values superficialities they are too young to control and with sympathy for the teachers who must cope with overcrowding, constant interruptions, and petty bureaucracy before they can begin to teach. The reality of his observations will be apparent to anyone who has ever taught (or been taught) in a public school; their implications are a sobering critique of the reinforcement of socioeconomic inequality.