Abstract
This book is about an evaluation rooted in evidence-based research that failed. Not only did the evaluation fail, but the findings it was supposed to highlight never materialized, and the program we evaluated disappeared in the flurry of budget cuts that occurred following the recession of 2008–2009. However, one of the highlights of the 3-year evaluation was our presence as researchers at Corcoran State Prison in October 2010. While there, we attended a meeting where at least half of the teachers in the vocational education classes we were evaluating were laid off. In this context, our evaluation of a 6-year-long “experiment” in evidence-based research slowly but surely petered out.
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Notes
- 1.
Notably, even in the context of the deep 2010 recession, these trades continued to be in high demand (Rasmussen 2010).
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Dick, A.j., Rich, W., Waters, T. (2016). Applied Research in California’s Prisons. In: Prison Vocational Education and Policy in the United States. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56469-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56469-6_2
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