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In 2022, the Colorado legislature passed the Educator Stipend Act (HB22-1220), an innovative program intended to reduce the financial barriers often faced by student teachers during their culminating clinical teaching experiences. Using COVID relief funds, the bill targeted lower income students based on eligibility for Pell grant funding, who tend to be more diverse. In compliance with the legislation, Dr. Cindy Gutierrez and Dr. Barbara Seidl in CU Denver’s teacher prep program contracted with the team at CU Denver’s The Evaluation Center to assess the impact for students receiving the stipends. The Evaluation Center team developed a survey and conducted interviews with the first group of teacher and counselor candidate recipients.

During a statewide coordinating call, participants from Metropolitan State University of Denver’s teacher prep program shared that they had also developed a survey and agreed to collaborate with The Evaluation Center on a merged survey. Dr. Susan Connors at The Evaluation Center worked with Barbara Fricks-Romero at Metro to prepare a single survey combining the strengths of both instruments to assure the recipient students had their voices heard concerning the impact of the teaching stipend. This survey instrument was shared with other teacher preparation programs in the state and later adapted by the Colorado Department of Higher Education for use to assess the impact of the educator stipend initiative statewide.

During an American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) national meeting roundtable discussion last month, Connors and Fricks-Romero discussed the value of multi-university collaboration to influence policy. They described their work as an example of a strategy to develop effective messages for policymakers regarding the need for and impact of investments in future teachers. In addition, they discussed the value of collaborative data collection and joint dissemination of results across education preparation provider programs, an infrequently used strategy. Finally, they discussed how they prepared effective messages and policy briefs to make a compelling case with policymakers surrounding the financial stress encountered by future teachers/counselors during their intensive clinical semesters and the positive impacts of the Educator Stipend Act.

“As you might imagine, study findings show that educator stipends really made a difference on whether teacher candidates continued with their programs or not,” said Susan Connors, an associate director at The Evaluation Center. “The extra funds reduced their anxiety and stress and allowed them to really engage in their clinical experience without having to work one, two, or three other jobs, or rely on family members or go deeper into debt. We also found that students used the stipends primarily for living essentials like housing and food. Currently, there is a bill that is moving forward that, if passed, will ascertain that the educator stipend program will continue annually as part of education funding within the State of Colorado.”

"Partnering with the Evaluation Center enabled us to leverage their expertise and resource capacity to collect the data needed to demonstrate the critical impact we knew intuitively the state educator stipends were having on our teacher candidate's ability to successfully complete their preparation programs,” said Gutierrez. “Clearly the high quality of their work paid off when the tool was adapted and used across the state so we could show legislators how important this financial resource is to moving the needle on the broad teacher shortage across Colorado."

Staffed by a team of 14 multidisciplinary, equity-focused evaluation professionals plus a team of graduate research assistants, The Evaluation Center at the University of Colorado Denver supports evidence-informed programs, practices, and policies while working in partnership with diverse clients and vulnerable populations in schools, institutions of higher education, governmental agencies, and nonprofit organizations to improve society. Team members are strong in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies and have vast experience implementing a wide range of evaluation theories, approaches, and dissemination methods. Areas of focus include education, public and behavioral health, community programs, and medical training.

The Evaluation Center team provides program evaluation for projects large and small, across disciplines and content areas, and across international borders. Current and recent clients include grants from the U.S. Department of Education including the Teacher Quality Partnership grant to CU Denver’s School of Education & Human Development and a grant to CU Denver for services to the Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions program. The Center serves as the evaluator for a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant to the Auraria Campus to provide violence and threat prevention. They currently evaluate five programs funded by the National Institutes of Health at the Anschutz Campus and a partnership with the University of Zimbabwe. The Center also evaluates seven grants from the National Science Foundation with sites at CU Boulder, CU Colorado Springs, CU Denver, and New Mexico State University.

At the state and local level, The Evaluation Center is currently conducting evaluations for the Colorado Departments of Public Health and Environment concerning multiple programs intended to address substance misuse and the Behavioral Health Administration’s work to prevent veteran suicide. The Center is evaluating the Department of Public Safety’s Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority initiatives and Aurora Public Schools COMPASS after school program, Evaluation services are also currently provided to local non-profit groups including the Colorado Gives Foundation, Brothers Redevelopment, and the Mile High Youth Corp. More information on these and other projects is available on their website.

“Our evaluation clients are like family to us,” said Connors. “Whether you are developing a new project or have a project underway, consider reaching out to The Evaluation Center to see if there is a fit.”

The Evaluation Center services are 100 percent grant or client funded. Services are billed at an hourly rate and range from developing evaluation plans, logic models, feasibility studies, literature reviews, and grant proposals to data collection, analyses, reporting, and dissemination. In addition, the Center strives to provide meaningful hands-on evaluation experience to interested graduate students.

Learn more at the-evaluation-center.org