Project Activities
Research plan
- 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?
Structured Abstract
Research design and methods
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.
Key outcomes
- 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."
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
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.
Questions about this project?
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