Educational Program Evaluation

Sun Associates specializes in designing plans and procedures to evaluate and assess the impact of educational technology on teaching and learning. Our evaluation work is designed to take schools and districts beyond their current strategic technology plans and into an area where they can begin to assess their progress in meeting the vision and goals of these plans. In the area of program evaluation for funded projects (i.e., "grants"), we work with projects to focus their goals, define evaluation questions, collect data, and to create formative/summative evaluation reports.

GEAR UP Partnership Grant at Fitchburg Public Schools and Mount Wachusett Community College

Sun Associates is the external evaluator for at $10 million, seven-year, GEAR UP partnership grant awarded to Mount Wachusett Community College. This project serves a cohort of 800 students — the Fitchburg (MA) Public Schools classes of 2024 and 2025. GEAR UP is a US Department of Education program aimed at helping secondary students develop the skills and habits of mind to successfully engage with a post-secondary college or career program.

U.S. Space and Rocket Center E3 Inquiry-Based Education Program

Sun Associates is the external project evaluator for the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s (USSRC) four-year grant from NASA to develop professional development and informal science education programming that emphasizes STEM connections with NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) program. Key project activities include evaluation of an annual “STEMcon” professional development offering for educators located in Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and Iowa and evaluation of an ISS exhibit at the USSRC’s Marshall Space Flight Center headquarters.

SIMBUILDING: Teaching Building Science with Simulation Games

Sun Associates was the external program evaluator for the NSF-funded SIMBUILDING project at the Concord Consortium. SIMBUILDING’s overarching goal was “to develop innovative simulation games for teaching and learning building science”. Sun Associates as the project’s external evaluator monitors the project’s progress and to offer formative advice on how the project can improve its performance in meeting its goals and objectives.

U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History (TAH) Projects

In our TAH evaluation and project development work, we bring a strong background in program evaluation combined with expertise (both academic and classroom-based) in U.S. History. We are not simply evaluators, but we are historians and history teachers. This combination of process and content knowledge has proven to be a significant asset to the 16 TAH projects we have evaluated in Massachusetts.

Lowell Public Schools Birth to Grade 3 Alignment Grant

Sun Associates provided external evaluation of Lowell Public Schools’ Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care-funded Birth to Grade 3 Alignment Grant for the 2014-2015 school year. Work included partnering with Early Childhood Associates to develop a set of project performance indicators, multiple data collection strategies (surveys, interviews, observations), and the creation of a comprehensive summative report at the end of the project year.

TESEL: Transforming Education and Schools for English Learners

TESEL is a partnership between Fitchburg State University (FSU), the Collaborative for Educational Services (CES) and three Central Massachusetts public school districts (Fitchburg, Leominster and Lowell Public Schools). TESEL is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Professional Development Program (NPD) to improve instruction for English Language Learners. Sun Associates provides external program evaluation for TESEL.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center

Sun Associates is the evaluator of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center’s Institute for Museum and Library Science grant to create interactive maps and digital tools for K-12 teachers. This project aims to support teachers in their work to develop student skills in literacy, problem-solving and critical thinking. These skills are developed through student interaction with digitized historical resources within inquiry-based classroom activities tied to social studies and STEM standards.

Next Step Learning – Building Science Investigation

Next Step Learning is a National Science Foundation-funded ITEST project that aims to create and support a science curriculum that fuses home and school-based components. The curriculum – Building Science Investigation – turns students’ homes into a “science lab” where they can explore concepts related to clean energy and the basic science of heat transfer. These concepts are investigated within a relevant real-world context of energy auditing. Sun Associates is the external evaluator for this project.