Evaluation guide

This Overview is part of the Succession Planning for Literacy and Basic Skills Agencies and Networks - Toolkit, available at: http://library.copian.ca/item/8611.

This document provides a guide to the background, nature, and use of the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) standard, a descriptive scale of language ability in English as a Second Language. The CLB standard is set out as 12 benchmarks or reference points progressing from basic to advanced, reflecting the growth of knowledge and skills that underlie basic, intermediate, and advanced ability among adult ESL learners.

Prepared by Community Literacy of Ontario (CLO), this toolkit provides literacy practitioners with information, strategies, and sample tools they can use to evaluate the work they do.

The Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework (OALCF) is the new cornerstone of Employment Ontario’s Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) program. With its introduction, LBS practitioners wondered if and how existing assessment tools fit within the OALCF.

This document offers a means of comparing reading levels across a variety of assessment approaches. It provides a graphic representation of the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) levels in comparison to the Essential Skills reading text levels and to the Ontario Common Curriculum Grades 1-10.

The report sets out the process for ensuring the continuity of good literacy and basic skills service in a community as new members join a Literacy Community Planning (LCP) committee. This “succession planning” involves making sure that crucial history, information, initiatives and decisions are documented.

This workbook describes a step-by-step process for developing an evaluation strategy for municipal workplace literacy programs. The approach is based on collaboration and on-going assessment. The workbook describes how to prepare for the evaluation, how to plan the evaluation, and how to carry it out.

This guide to evaluation grew out of research conducted by the Family Literacy Action Group (FLAG) of Alberta. The research identified what family literacy workers in Alberta considered key issues and concerns. The most prevalent of these issues and concerns were the lack of on-going funding sources for family literacy programs and the need for strategies for reaching families most in need of this type of support.

This handbook is directed at those interested in the evaluation of workplace literacy programs. It contains suggestions and advice.