With objectives such as these, your evaluation group (team or cooperative) will be in a position to begin the next series of problem solving steps to help you organize a large portion of evaluation activities.

Revisit current assessment tools with a critical "family" eye

After laying out all current assessment techniques in use which relate to family literacy, it is necessary to review them and analyze individual items with a critical family literacy perspective, asking an essential question:

While family literacy program objectives aim to increase parent-child literacy skills and involvement for home literacy activities, are information gathering techniques specifically designed to obtain information on how parent and child families make use of the program?

With this critical review question in mind, identify where your current assessment techniques can be clearer in focusing on parent and child. What items need to be reworked or added? For example, a current intake form may be revised to ensure that families can participate in more contact with the program. Routine contacts with families may be documented with a little adjustment to regular progress recording notes already made by a practitioner. We have also found that making the recording of family contact more explicit, serves as a prompt initiating contact with families, while families have been alerted to the possibility of increased interaction with the program.

Use An EPE Framework To Review Your Current Assessment Approaches

Although evaluation is an ongoing process over the course of a program, it is useful to think of assessment in terms of collecting information during three time periods:

• Entry - When participants first enter the program it is important to obtain baseline information from learners. This information establishes a comparison point from which some judgments of later progress will be made. Select those measures that will provide a profile of literacy needs and interests at enrolment, along with other dimensions of family literacy, by which participation in the program may be later evaluated. Appendices I contains samples of such measures which were found useful by programs participating in this project.