Chapter 8: Thinking like an Evaluator: A Paradigm for Preparing Practice-Ready and Change-Focused School Leaders

This chapter introduces the paradigm of “thinking like an evaluator” (TLE) in the context of K-12 public school leadership preparation programs and provides a review of important theories and concepts relating to evaluation, change agency, and leadership decision-making. Thinking like an evaluator represents a theory of action that leverages systems thinking and moves iteratively through the tasks of describing organizational problems and opportunities, determining the readiness to engage in evaluation planning and design, and communicating and using evaluation evidence to inform changes to and decisions about problems and opportunities. The relevance of this paradigm to the development of leaders who can facilitate meaningful and lasting change in their schools is described within the context of the School-Wide Change Initiative (SWCI), a capstone assignment used by the Great Leaders for Great Schools Academy (GLGSA), a U.S. Department of Education-funded school leadership preparation program in the College of Education and Integrative Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona).