Student Futures Project

The Student Futures Project (SFP), formerly the High School Graduate Data Center, is a partnership among Skillpoint Alliance, the Ray Marshall Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and ten Central Texas independent school districts (ISDs).  The Project is generously supported by the Austin Chamber of Commerce and TG.

Research and Evaluation

The purpose of Skillpoint Alliance's Research and Evaluation is to help ensure the quality of Skillpoint education and workforce development programs and services by providing data, analysis, and evaluation to Skillpoint management and staff and to external funders.  In fulfilling this function, Research and Evaluation is charged with:

(1) providing required performance reports to funders on a timely basis;
(2) measuring progress toward the accomplishment of program outcomes (impact), as well as creating a better understanding about the organizational and program processes for achieving those outcomes (process); and
(3) seeking out collaborative opportunities for conducting research and evaluation whose results will help inform policymakers about education and workforce development trends.

These R & E functions are in accord with the purposes for evaluation described in Skillpoint’s Evaluation Policies and Guidelines:
• Accountability,
• Program improvement, and
• Knowledge generation.

In addition, Research and Evaluation exercises a role in developing management information systems and knowledge management functions in the organization, for example, through the systemization of data collection and reporting.
Research and Evaluation serves what might be described as both an internal role and an external role.  Its internal role comprises its function as an internal quality control mechanism through the standardization of program evaluation processes and the measurement of program outputs and outcomes, as well as collecting and reporting information relative to organizational performance.  Its external role relates to Skillpoint’s orientation toward contributing information and analysis to policy decisions in the workforce and education arenas and to its interest in contributing to the knowledge base of the field from which it and other organizations draw.

Statistics/Information

Summary of Exit Survey Results

2008 Educator Conference Participant Exit Survey Comments