Community School Alliances

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USAID

Participatory development and use of a 'best practice' baseline/impact assessment instrument and related project monitoring tools

CSA aims to achieve three broad objectives:

Increased community awareness, responsibility and advocacy for education.
Strengthened community school support organizations.
Enhanced community participation in design, implementation/monitoring of school improvement efforts.

These objectives identify what the project is intended to achieve. But what, exactly, do they mean? How will project stakeholders know that they are making progress? How will they know when these objectives are being met?

To help answer these questions, the CSA team broke down the project's three broad objectives into a series of more concrete sub-objectives. Sub-objectives were based on a series of best practices for involving communities in education programs. These best practices were distilled from the experiences of six USAID sponsored community participation in education projects worldwide, and were described in the publication Involving Communities: Participation in the Delivery of Education Programs, prepared by Andrea Rugh and Heather Bossert, Creative Associates International, ABEL Project, 1998.

Best practice sub-objectives allow project stakeholders to monitor progress in particular aspects of community participation in education. These sub-objectives form the basis for all project monitoring tools and materials.

View list of best practice sub-objectives

The CSA team used its fifteen best practice sub-objectives as the basis for a community participation in education baseline assessment instrument. The instrument describes each sub-objective in terms that are culturally appropriate to the Ghanaian context. Descriptions were field-tested and refined based on community feedback.

Community status for each sub-objective is assessed on a five-point anchored scale, in which each point on the scale is described using a rubric along with supportive descriptive information. During the baseline activity, the various community stakeholder groups are assessed as to their current status of community awareness and involvement in the educational process. These data are gathered externally by the Ghana Education Service District Monitoring Assistants. Based on the stakeholder (focus group) ratings, the monitoring assistant then determines the community rating.

More information about Baseline Assessment

Access sample baseline assessment instrument

At different times throughout the project, community members and CSA staff assess community progress using instruments that are based on the best practices. Such monitoring occurs monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annually, depending on the type of assessment and group involved.