Consult these websites below for good general, introductory resources about program evaluation. These sites offer a good walk-through of basic evaluation planning, written for non-specialists. Even though these groups are not from education, you will find that their documents work well for writing project sites doing program evaluation.

For general evaluation planning, a good website with focused, teacher and PD relevant content is a site maintained by the New York State Teacher Centers called NYS Program Evaluation. It provides a useful, orienting walk-through of the steps in planning an evaluation and is written for non-specialists with a general education background. The site discusses identifying stakeholders and planning the evaluation. It also contains some simple planning tools and charts that might be useful. You can get a feel for the site in a very brief visit to see if it will meet your site's needs in getting an overview of an evaluation process.

Another useful site comes from the United Way. United Ways across the United States maintain resource centers to support management and operations of local non-profits in their areas. These can be sources of recommendations for consultants, classes and educational tools. This site, the United Way Outcome Measurement Resource Network, is a documenting and investigating the impact of their work. Although the site is written with examples from non-profit and agency work as opposed to professional development, this slight shift might help a site think freshly about its work. Site is written for non-specialists.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families has published a useful resource called The Program Manager's Guide to Evaluation. In addition to covering basic planning for evaluation, it also includes sections on working with an outside evaluator. Similarly, a range of diverse information is gathered at ManagementHelp.org in their Management Library. In addition to program evaluation, the library contains information about evaluating advertising campaigns, agency processes, etc. They also provide a Basic Guide to Program Evaluation that is useful.

There are many materials produced through the Agricultural Extension Services that might be interesting to sites. Yes, the Extension Services... Like writing projects, extension services often plan and deliver educational programs at a distance from the home of the project and need to devise ways to gather data on these programs. One simple program evaluation overview of this type can be found in this downloadable document: Planning a Program Evaluation.pdf

Finally, we recommend a review of two documents from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, available here in PDF. These two documents, one on program evaluation and one on logic models, are focused introductions to concepts in program evaluation that have been widely spread throughout the foundation community due to the importance of the Kellogg Foundation. These documents would make for a great group study by local leaders thinking about significant evaluation work, particularly of a foundation-funded program. Download and read the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's documents below. The Evaluation Handbook is also available in Spanish:
W.K. Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook.pdf
W.K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide.pdf
Kellogg Manual de Evaluacion.pdf