Montgomery County Public Schools staff presented a proposal Sept. 16 to create a new program-evaluation policy to guide systematic reviews of district programs and initiatives. Dr. Keisha Addison, director, Department of Shared Accountability, said the proposal would formalize the program evaluation framework first launched publicly in 2023 and provide more consistent guidance on what to evaluate, how to evaluate it, and when to revisit programs after evaluations.
Addison told the committee she reviewed other districts' policies and plans and identified one (Chapel Hill-Carrboro) that explicitly references academic "return on investment," a concept the committee asked staff to consider. The proposed policy would not replace existing regulations for external research requests; instead staff said it would supplement the district's toolkit for internal program review and oversight. Committee members asked that any policy ensure evaluations cover programs that affect the majority of students and that pilot-selection practices be representative across the county; members expressed concern that pilot programs historically have used volunteer sites that under-represent East County and other communities.
Staff said they will marry the new policy with the existing program-evaluation framework and return a draft policy for committee review at the Dec. 3 meeting. The committee discussed whether the policy should specify scoring matrices or prioritization criteria for choosing which programs to evaluate; staff said the existing framework describes "how" work is done and that the policy would define "what" the board expects. Board members suggested that prioritization guidance (e.g., scale of budget or student impact) could be developed in practice rather than embedded as prescriptive language in policy.
No formal committee vote was required; staff received direction to draft language that incorporates the committee's oversight expectations and to return with a policy draft in December.