Evaluating educational system designs

In reaction to claims that educational systems in the USA are not responding well to the needs of learners, school districts have responded with a highly diverse set of ‘reform activities’ ranging from increased focus on incremental improvements in programs to a variety of structural changes. A few educators began to ‘think systemically’, that is, they began to take systems principles into account as change efforts were designed and planned. Such educators have been able to obtain both guidance and encouragement from system philosophers, designers, and practitioners who are spearheading the emergence of a new technology concerned with the design of social systems. But, the challenge of rethinking how systems that redesign themselves might be evaluated has received too little attention. Like the mismatch believed to exist between current educational practice and the needs of learners, there is also a mismatch between traditional evaluation theory and practice and the need for new theory, models, and methodology for evaluating new system designs. This paper addresses this issue by proposing a framework for evaluating educational system designs. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.