ESDI's Corporate Experience

Evaluation Systems Design, Inc. (ESDI) of Tallahassee, Florida, is a private consulting firm whose purpose is to provide expert assistance in assessing, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating programs in education and human services. Incorporated in Florida in 1979, ESDI has successfully completed more than 150 contracts with state and local agencies and with private industry over a 20-year span of consulting. Many of these contracts have been for statewide evaluations of innovative educational programs or reform efforts that extended over multiple years. Examples have been evaluations of pre-kindergarten and early intervention programs, staff development programs, curricular areas such as reading programs, and technology programs. We have an extensive knowledge of public school education in Florida at the school, district, and state levels. Corporate areas of expertise and interest include: program evaluation, tests, and measurement, educational research, statistics, data analysis, instructional systems and design, technology implementation and use, training, needs assessment, curriculum development, and information systems.

ESDI has over 20 years of experience in developing and conducting scientifically sound evaluation methodologies and work plans that are closely monitored. In addition, we have equal qualifications and experiences in evaluating human services programs and developing curriculum and training programs. We have successfully completed over 30 statewide contracts with the Florida Department of Education and have provided similar services in Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Delaware. We have also conducted major evaluations for local school districts including direct contracts in the Florida districts of Brevard, Jefferson, Dade, Madison, Orange, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, Suwannee, and Volusia. Our human services program evaluation studies have included an evaluation of Georgia's public assistance and child support enforcement systems, a study of children's mental health services in Arizona, and evaluations of programs in mental health, developmental disabilities, case management, corrections, juvenile delinquency, job employment, offender rehabilitation, child abuse and neglect, and prevention and early intervention programs. Training programs have included development of the teacher's manual for the Writing to Read 2000 program for IBM, the training program on Vital Signs for School Improvement for the Florida Department of Education, and training on instructional materials selection.

ESDI’s Experience in Statewide Studies of Complex Educational Systems

ESDI staff members have had extensive experience in program evaluation and program development at the national, state, and local levels for many education programs. ESDI’s national experience included planning and conducting a national four-year evaluation of the IBM product Writing to Write. In Florida, we have conducted large-scale statewide evaluations of the newly enacted Professional Development System, the FDLRS (Florida Diagnostics and Learning Resource Services) Centers, Schoolyear 2000, educational technology, and preschool at-risk programs. We have also conducted five comprehensive statewide studies for the Illinois State Board of Education that were similar in scope and design to this study and included analyses of student achievement data. We have completed national studies in the private sector for IBM, Motorola, and the National Association of Realtors, as well as international consulting for Telstra in Australia. We have had major statewide contracts in Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia, and have completed projects of a similar nature and duration to the proposed work effort.

Directly related to this work effort, we have previously completed several projects in the area of reading programs, at-risk students, and many other similar evaluation studies. Most directly, we conducted the first year evaluation of the FLaRE Grant and have an indepth knowledge of the state and district issues and concerns related to assessing reading achievement of Florida’s students. We also have conducted a statewide evaluation for the Illinois State Board of Education of primary-level reading programs targeted toward high-risk students that included analyses of reading assessment data. We have worked extensively in Chapter I by developing reporting mechanisms for data and evaluating programs as required by the nationally prescribed evaluation models, and studying factors associated with successful high poverty schools. We have evaluated the Florida Pre-Kindergarten At-Risk Program that addressed collaboration mechanisms, program implementation, program success, program structures and characteristics, and program evaluation design and procedures in a manner similar to the evaluation described in this proposal. Please note that we have extensive experience in collecting and analyzing large data sets of student achievement test scores including five evaluations of innovative educational programs that met the stringent criteria of national review panel as exemplary evaluations. The nationwide evaluation of the Writing to Write program involved data analyses for 25 targeted schools and 25 five matched comparison schools on standardized achievement scores at multiple grade levels.

Examples of the type of national and statewide evaluations and other studies ESDI has completed include:

ESDI also has extensive experience in designing and conducting qualitative data collection including focus group interviews, telephone interviews, individual face-to-face interviews, observations in public school classrooms, and surveys that include open-ended questions. We are experienced in conducting content analyses of qualitative data to identify common themes and factors.