Compass Consulting Group collaborates with diverse clientele to evaluate a wide variety of early childhood, educational, and social service programs. A few of our current projects are highlighted below.
Compass is working with Westat to conduct the Data Quality Initiative for the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of Education (ED). Westat and Compass are providing technical assistance (TA) services to smaller ED programs aimed at ensuring high quality information on program outcomes and impacts. Services available to selected grant programs include assistance with grant competitions, evaluation TA to grantees and local evaluators, assistance with data collection and analysis for annual performance reports, and assistance with collecting and analyzing aggregated grantee data. In addition, DQI staff are developing a series of evaluation briefs on specific topics aimed at improving data quality.
Compass is one of three small business contracted by Westat to assist with a five-year study funded by OSEP. The purpose of the study is to assess the quality and effectiveness of states' IDEA Part B and C monitoring and improvement practices. The study intends to describe the nature and extent of states' practices, assess the impact of states' practices on achieving desired outcomes for infants and children with disabilities, and develop recommendations for potential best practices that can be shared with states.
The NYSED is participating in the No Child Left Behind Title II MSP program. The intent of the grant program is to fund partnerships between high-need school districts and the science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) departments in institutions of higher education in order to improve K-12 math and science education and student achievement. Compass is working with the NYSED to conduct a statewide evaluation of the program and provide technical assistance to MSP projects to help ensure their evaluations are technically sound. The outcome data collected through the MSP evaluations as well as additional data collected by Compass related to project implementation and unintended outcomes will be compiled to evaluate the overall progress of the MSP program.
To address issues of limited healthcare resources and a growing population of Latino families in Wake County, the John Rex Endowment in Raleigh has funded a variety of health intervention projects to bridge the gaps in Wake County's health delivery systems. One such project, ECHO2, was designed as a multidisciplinary approach to providing health services and referrals in six targeted communities and involves a team of social workers, family nurse practitioners, school nurses, mental health counselors, community leaders, and lay health advisors who are also community residents. Compass has been contracted to evaluate the ECHO2 project delivery model of health and support services to underserved communities in Wake County. To carry out the evaluation, Compass is conducting a two-fold study primarily involving: 1) gathering qualitative information about the service delivery model from ECHO2 staff, community leaders, lay health advisors, and service recipients to assess the impact and importance of delivery type (non-traditional) as well as service recipients' ability to receive services and their satisfaction with services; and 2) completing a variation of cost-effectiveness, called a cost-consequence analysis to compare the cost of providing non-traditional health care to a “hard to reach” population with that of providing traditional health care (i.e., public hospital/emergency room, health clinic) for the same population.
Smart Start is a statewide early childhood initiative to help NC children enter school healthy and ready to succeed. Its approach is to allow individual communities to make decisions and plans that are specific to the needs of children 0-5 and their families. Smart Start services include improvement of quality, accessibility, and affordability of child care, health and mental health services, and resources for family support. Since 1996, Compass partners have collaborated with more than 10 Smart Start Partnerships encompassing more than 180 grantee agencies and programs to:
The School District of Greenville County in South Carolina has instituted arts integration projects at an elementary and middle school in order to better address the academic needs of at-risk and low-performing students. Compass is collaborating with both the School District and Metropolitan Arts Council to evaluate the impact of the program on students and teachers. The evaluation will encompass coordinating data collection, compiling and analyzing data collected throughout the course of the projects, and developing reports for stakeholders.
Work Sample: Arts Integration Teacher Survey
Project New Start – Phase II was developed to expand comprehensive employment and training activities to dislocated workers in Harnett, Johnston, Randolph, and Wilson counties. As part of this project local community-based organizations in these counties are designated to work closely with local workforce and human service agencies to meet the comprehensive needs of dislocated workers, focusing on gaps in services or outreach to groups that are underserved or have not been able to get a job before running out of unemployment benefits. Compass is working with The Rural Center to conduct a formative and summative evaluation of this multi-year effort while providing technical assistance to the local service agencies to help them track clients and analyze, report, and utilize findings to improve services.
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