Evaluation of the Comprehensive Technical Assistance Centers for Fiscal Year 2005 Grantees
Contract Information
Current Status:
This study has been completed.
Duration:
August 2006 – December 2011
Cost:
$7,203,836
Contract Number:
ED-04-CO-0041
Contractor(s):
Branch Associates
Decision Information Resources
Policy Studies Associates
Contact:
Reports
The Comprehensive Technical Assistance Centers is a federal grant program authorized under the Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002. The purpose of the Centers is to help state education agencies build capacity to implement state-level initiatives and to support district- and school-level initiatives that improve educational outcomes for all students, close achievement gaps, and improve the quality of instruction.
In Fiscal Year 2005, five-year grants were awarded to 21 Centers (including Regional Comprehensive Centers that work directly with states and Content Centers that provide content-area expertise) with the purpose to provide technical assistance to States to support their implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. The Fiscal Year 2010 appropriation for the Centers was $59.3 million. The Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002 mandated a national evaluation of the program, and this evaluation focused on the Fiscal Year 2005 grantees.
- How did the Regional Comprehensive Centers and Content Centers operate as part of the Comprehensive Technical Assistance Centers program?
- What was the performance of the Comprehensive Centers in addressing state needs and priorities? How did their performance change over the period of time studied?
- To what extent was the assistance provided by the Centers of high quality, high relevance, and high usefulness?
The evaluation was designed to be a multi-year study examining the Centers. Data collection recurred annually to gather information on Center performance during the 2006–07, 2007–08 and 2008–09 program years: (1) Center management plans and documentation were collected from each center to describe Center objectives and planned activities; (2) interviews were conducted with staff from each Center to learn about the types of products and services delivered; (3) expert panels reviewed a sample of projects undertaken by each Center to assess the quality of the technical assistance provided; (4) a survey of Center project participants obtained client ratings of the relevance and usefulness of the services they received; and (5) a survey of senior state education agency officials assessed how the work of the Centers met states' technical assistance needs and priorities. Additionally, a set of case studies were conducted in 2008–09 to examine the extent to which the Centers helped to build the state's capacity to implement key provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act.
The final report, titled National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Technical Assistance Centers: Final Report, was released in August 2011.
Other publications from this study are listed below.
- Consistent with the program design, Regional Comprehensive Centers worked directly with states on an ongoing basis in over 80 percent of the sampled projects in each year, and Content Centers focused on synthesizing, translating, and delivering knowledge to Regional Comprehensive Centers and states in more than 70 percent of sampled projects in each year.
- Centers addressed the most frequently cited state priority of "statewide systems of support," and an increasing number of state managers reported each year that Center assistance served their purposes (36, 47, and 56 percent in years 2006–07, 2007–08, and 2008–09, respectively).
- State managers reported that Center assistance expanded state capacity in "statewide systems of support," a predominant focus of technical assistance. In 2008–09, 82 percent of state managers indicated that Center assistance expanded state capacity in "statewide systems of support" to a "great" or "moderate" extent.
- On average across each of the three years, expert panels rated sampled project materials as "moderate" to "high" quality, and project participants rated the sampled projects "high" on relevance and usefulness. Ratings were on a 5-point scale, with 3 representing "moderate" and 4 representing "high."