The U.S. Department of Education developed the Gender Equity Expert Panel to identify promising and exemplary programs that promote gender equity in and through education. This panel of experts reviewed self-nominated programs to determine whether they met four criteria:
The 11 exemplary and promising programs that the Panel recommended during the review cycle from 1996-99 are a sample of many currently available solutions.
The Gender Equity Expert Panel is one of the four expert panels established to implement provisions in the 1994 reauthorization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). The provisions direct OERI to establish "panels of appropriate qualified experts and practitioners" to evaluate educational programs and recommend to the Secretary those programs that should be designated as promising or exemplary. The other expert panels are on
Planning for the Gender Equity Expert Panel started in 1995, with the first Panel members selected in 1996. The 34 Panel members who eventually served had expertise in a wide variety of gender equity topics and represented diverse education roles and populations.
The Gender Equity Expert Panel formed six subpanels in the following areas:
The initial submission guidelines issued in September 1996 covered all the subpanels. Separate submission guidelines were issued in the spring of 1998 for the subpanel on the Prevention of Violence and Sexual and Racial Harassment in Higher Education. The 1998 guidelines limited submissions to programs focusing on higher education, since the funding for this subpanel came from a Safe and Drug-Free Schools contract with The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention.
One-hundred gender equity products, programs, and policies were submitted for review. The initial reviewers were either subpanel members or individuals recruited by the subpanel chairs for their special expertise in areas covered by the submission. Most of the reviews were conducted by mail, although two subpanels held meetings to discuss the initial judgments prior to developing the summary reviews.
Each complete submission to the panel was reviewed by at least two subpanel reviewers. The reviewers were responsible for judging the four criteria listed earlier. In 1997, OERI formed an Impact Review Panel (IRP) to examine evidence of effectiveness for all programs that the panels were considering recommending as exemplary. Members of the IRP reviewed the appropriate submissions to the Gender Equity Panel and sent the results of their deliberations to the full Panel for consideration.
After the initial reviews were completed, the subpanel chairs worked with reviewers to prepare a summary review document describing the program and its strengths and weaknesses in relation to the evaluation criteria.
The Panel made iterative decisions at two key meetings. First, the full Panel met in September 1997, and made initial decisions about its first group of potentially promising and exemplary programs. Second, approximately 20 representatives from all the subpanels met in December 1998, and discussed subpanel recommendations to make sure that all the criteria and decision rules were applied consistently across subpanels. During this meeting, they also considered the comments from the IRP about the strength of the evidence to support claims of positive impact for programs the subpanels judged potentially exemplary.
The updated reviews in this report provide descriptive and evaluative information on the 11 programs, one that was recommended as Exemplary and 10 that the panel recommended as Promising. The subcriteria the reviewers used to guide their descriptions of the strengths and weaknesses under each of the four criteria are described in the next section of this report under "Evaluation Criteria."
To be rated as Exemplary, the program had to receive "excellent" ratings on each of the four criteria categories. Promising programs had to receive ratings of at least "good" on each category. Most received "excellent" on all categories except for evidence of effectiveness.
To receive an "excellent" rating on evidence of effectiveness, there had to be very convincing evidence from multiple sites that the intervention was a major contributor to one or more important gender equity claims of positive impact without substantial counter-evidence of negative impact on gender equity, or other important results in other sites. To receive a "good" rating on evidence of effectiveness, the intervention must demonstrate at least one important and meaningful positive gender equity claim that is supported by some relational evidence in one or more sites. As with exemplary status, there could be no substantial counter-evidence that it had a negative impact on gender equity or other important results.
The 11 Exemplary and Promising programs recommended in this round of reviews by the Gender Equity Expert Panel are an important set of resources for educators and other community leaders who want to use programs that have evidence that they can increase gender equity.
The 11 summary reviews are grouped into 4 topic areas that generally correspond to the subpanels:
When educators seek resources that are likely to assist them in advancing gender equity in their situations, the Panel hopes that educators will find summaries of these promising and exemplary programs helpful. Additional information on the Gender Equity Expert Panel and the System of Expert Panels may be found on the U.S. Department of Education's Web Site: www.ed.gov under "Expert Panels" in the home page topic index.
This page last modified October 2, 2001 (jer)