Center for Schools and Communities offers a full complement of research and evaluation services to school districts, state agencies, nonprofits and foundations and will bring extensive experience and training to every phase of your research and evaluation project, including consultations to improve the operation of existing projects. The Research and Evaluation (R&E) Group at CSC applies a wide range of methods and tools to give stakeholders insights into these foundational indicators.

With over 20 years partnering with state agencies and higher education, the R&E Group is highly skilled in developing evaluation data that is in increasingly greater demand.

  • Are you prepared to present program statistics to potential funders?
  • Do you have proposal-ready tabulations or visualizations of the constituents you serve?
  • Can you link your outcomes to data about activity frequency?

The R&E Group can help you answer these and similar questions. It leverages dynamic and automated software solutions, expertise in evaluation and research, the [resources] of the Center for Schools and Communities, and strong networks in the non-profit and agency space to give stakeholders high quality evaluation data that is actionable and up to date.

Research and Evaluation Services

  • Data Analyses (quantitative and qualitative)

    • Providing descriptive, multivariate and inferential analyses.
    • Conducting interviews and focus groups.
    • Creating professional statistical and research reporting.

  • Logic Models and Program Design

    • Mapping goals to activities and outcomes.
    • Developing program logic with theory of action.
  • Survey Design and Implementation

  • Database Conceptualization

    • Building secure, large-scale data collection systems for evaluation and administrative data.

  • Writing and Editing

    • Writing reporting for technical and general audiences.
    • Creating statistical graphs and analytic illustrations.
  • Grant Writing Support
  • Evaluation Designs
  • Needs and Best Practices Research

Recent Projects

Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Professional Development Organization: Thousands of early childhood educators rely on the R&E Group’s PDO case management system to track their academic progress. For over five years, the system has provided a web-based application for students to receive grants, a robust interface for program staff to monitor and log students’ course completions, numerous live reports and secure authentication protocols to ensure data integrity. Additionally, the system provides a consolidated platform for communicating with students and evaluating factors that relate to their progress.

Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP): The R&E Group leads the monitoring and evaluation efforts of OBPP. Under the direction of Benjamin Cohen, the R&E Group leads questionnaire development, research design, data analysis and serves as an expert in the research on bullying prevention.

Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: The R&E Group partners with the Pennsylvania Key to design and coordinate data collection for children receiving services from consultants. It also offers expertise in longitudinal data analysis to support the PA Key’s ongoing reporting needs, and monitoring and evaluation to identify areas for program improvement.

Let’s Work Together! 

Jeffrey C. Kay, CSIU, and Robert Carmo, CSC, share insights to help school business officials adjust to the new hybrid environment in the July/August 2022 edition of School Business Affairs.

Read Leadership Confessions: Lessons Learned in a Hybrid World. (PDF)