GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Course Description and Requirements

This course examines how the policies and programs of public agencies are proposed, established, operated, and evaluated. The course also covers the role of research in the program evaluation process, including alternative methodologies for policy assessment. The purpose of the course is to familiarize the student with the process through which public policy and programs are judged to be successful, or not.

Students will be evaluated on the following: (1) two written critical interpretations of assigned literature which will be called RESPONSE PAPERS–which will be discussed in detail in a later handout–(40% of your final grade); (2) reading and active participation in seminar discussions (20%); (3) oral presentations (15%); and (4) a final examination (25%). More specific guidelines on the preparation of the response papers will be provided in a separate handout. Each student is expected to complete all of the assigned readings for each class session, and be prepared to summarize, offer critical assessments–or both–of the literature as well as the comments of fellow classmates.

Assigned Texts

James P. Lester and Joseph Stewart, Jr., Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach, 2^nd Edition, (Belmont: Wadsworth Thompson, 2000).

Paul E. Peterson and Bryan C. Hassel (eds.), Learning From School Choice, (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998).

Peter H. Rossi, Howard E. Freeman, and Mark W. Lipsey, Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, 6^th edition, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999).

There also are a number of journal articles that are assigned readings. They are available in the library (on reserve) or on-line.

Policies

Mobile Phones: Please be courteous to your colleagues and instructor by turning off your mobile phone before entering the classroom.

Extra Credit: No extra credit assignments will be given in this course.

Late Submission of Research Papers: All papers should be submitted on time. Any paper submitted after the deadline will be penalized one full letter grade (no exceptions).

Incomplete Grades: No incomplete grades will be assigned at the end of this semester, except in the case of extraordinary, officially validated emergencies.

Course Outline and Assigned Readings

1. Introduction: The Policy Continuum; What is Evaluation? Who Conducts Analysis? Why, and for Whom? How Has Policy Evaluation Evolved?

Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey, Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, Chapters 1 & 12.

Haveman, “Policy Analysis and Evaluation Research After Twenty Years,” Policy Studies Journal, V. 16, No. 2, pp. 191-218.

Lee and Sampson, “A Practical Approach to Program Evaluation,” Evaluation and Program Planning, V. 13, No. 2, pp. 157-164.

2. Types of Public Policy

Ripley, Policy Analysis in Political Science, Chapter 3 (Reserve)

3. Public Policy Formulation

Rochefort and Cobb, “Problem Definition, Agenda Access, and Policy Choice,” Policy Studies Journal, V. 21, No. 1, pp. 56-71.

Arnold, “Beyond Self-Interest: Policy Entrepreneurs and Aid to the Homeless,” Policy Studies Journal, V. 18, No. 1, pp. 47-66.

5. Public Policy Implementation

Bryner, “Implementing Global Environmental Agreements,” Policy Studies Journal, V. 19, No. 2, pp. 103-114.

Levin and Ferman, “The Political Hand: Policy Implementation and Youth Employment Programs,” Journal of Policy Analysis, V. 5, No. 2, pp. 311-325.

6. Public Policy Evaluation–Conceptualizing an Evaluation Study

Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey, Chapters 2 & 3.

Lipsey and Pollard, “Driving Toward Theory in Program Evaluation: More Models to Choose From,” Evaluation and Program Planning, V. 12, 317-328.

7. Identifying Program Objectives

Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey, Chapters 4 & 5.

8. Program Monitoring

Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey, Chapter 6

Wholey and Hatry, “The Case for Performance Monitoring,” Public Administration Review, V. 56, No. 6, pp. 604-610.

9. Evaluating Program Impact

Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey, Chapters 7-10

10. Evaluating Program Efficiency

Rossi, Freeman, and Lipsey, Chapter 11.

Zerbe, “Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Legal? Three Rules,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, V. 17, No. 3, pp. 419-456.

Skaburskis, “Cost-Benefit Analysis: Ethics and Problem Boundaries,” Evaluation Review, V. 11, No. 5, pp. 591-611.

11. Case Study: School Choice

Paul E. Peterson and Bryan C. Hassel (eds.), Learning From School Choice, (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998).

12. Case Study: “Three Strikes”

Gray, Larsen, Haynes, and Olson, “Using Cost-Benefit Analysis to Evaluate Correctional Sentences,” Evaluation Review, V. 15, No. 4, pp. 471-481.

13. Case Study: Department of Education policy outlawing student loans for ex-offenders

Burd, “Seeking Redemption for a Drug Law,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 5, 2002.

Higher Education Amendments Act, P.L. 105-244, H. Amdt. 582 (A016)

14. Course Review

Writing Tips

Title Pages

Your paper should have one that includes at least the following information: paper title, your name, course name, course number, and the date. If you have a title page, there is no need to repeat the title on first page of text. Try to give your paper a relatively interesting title. "Short Paper" or "Term Paper" or "Interest Group Assignment" are dull. You can put your title in a font that is slightly larger than normal text but avoid extremely large fonts. In other words, 12-18 point fonts are fine, but 35 point fonts are too large.

Quotation Marks and Indenting Quotes

You should place quotation marks around any direct quotes. If the person you are quoting quotes another source, you should use the double marks for the outer quotation marks and the single marks for the inner quotation marks. Example: Snob magazine reported: "If you aren’t vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard or The Hamptons, then you aren’t vacationing.”

If your quote is lengthy (four or more lines), you should indent the quote and use single-spaced text. You do not need to use quotation marks around indented quotes because it is clear from the context and the format.

Ellipses

You should always use ellipses when you remove words from a quotation. You should not use ellipses if your removal of words changes the meaning of the text. If your missing words are in the middle of sentence, you should replace theme with three dots separated by spaces as well as preceded and followed by spaces (i.e. <space>.<space>.<space>.<space>). The spaces make the ellipses look better when typed. Example: "Many older residents find that retirement communities are more . . . peaceful if children do not live on the property."

If you omit the end of sentence before going on to the next sentence in your quotation, you should use four dots instead of three with no space between the first dot and the end of the first sentence and two spaces after the fourth dot (as in the two spaces after a period). The first dot is the period. Example: "The Democrats ran a mean-spirited campaign in 1998...Their radio commercials about church burnings implied that the Republicans are racists."

It's or Its?

The first is short for "it is" as in "It's sad to Republicans that a Democrat lives in the White House." The second is a pronoun as in "Florida suffered a terrible blow when its orange crop froze last January."

Brackets

When you excerpt a quote, you may want to substitute a few words of your own for the actual words for clarification purposes. For example, you might want to replace a pronoun with the actual person or group. You need to put the words that you insert in brackets. Example: [Tom Brokaw] recently wrote a book that lauds the World War II generation. Similarly, if your quote begins in the middle of the sentence, you may capitalize the first letter, but you should put it in brackets. Example: [T]he Iraqi government objected to sanctions.

Guide to Citations

I am a stickler for proper citations. Following are various types. You are free to choose a particular style, though I prefer bibliographic citations in footnotes or endnotes. Please be consistent: use the same style throughout your paper.

Parenthetical Citations

Instead of footnotes, you may choose to use parenthetical citations (though footnotes are also perfectly acceptable). All works cited in parentheses must have full citations in your bibliography at the end of the paper.

The Basic Form. The basic form is really very simple: (Author Year), as in (McGillicutty 1997). If you wish to refer to a specific page in the book, the form is (Author Year: Page). Example: (McGillicutty 1997: 27). If multiple pages need citation simply use dashes or commas as necessary, as in (McGillicutty 1997: 27-32, 64). If you are referring to the author in the text, you should simply put the date, and pages if necessary, in parentheses after the reference to the author's name. Example: According to McGillicutty (1997: 9), Judge Leon Higginbotham directly contradicted Thernstrom (1987) on the applicability of Section 5 of the Voting

Rights Act to redistricting.

Multiple Sources. If you want to cite more than one work at the same time, use semi-colons to separate the cites. Example: (McGillicutty 1997; Holden 1987). If you have more than one work by the same author(s) in one year, you need to designate the work that appears first in your bibliography (the one with the title that begins with the letter that appears earlier in the alphabet)

as "a" and the second as "b" and so on. The letter designations should appear in both the bibliography and in your parenthetical citations. Example: (McGillicutty 1997a).

Multiple Authors. You should list all authors for works with three or fewer authors. The order of their names should following the order given by the authors. Example: (Fitch, Fox, and Brown 1992; Smalls and Shakur 1998). If there are more than three authors, give the author's first name and then "et al." Example: (Brown et al 1991).

No Author. Use the title in place of the author if there is no author. You should feel free to shorten it as long as it is clear and distinct. Example: (LDF Report 1994).

Biblographic Citations

Books: Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1963.

Articles in Scholarly Journals: Bullock III, Charles S. 1981. "Congressional Voting and the Mobilization of a Black Electorate in the South." Journal of Politics 43 (December): 662-82.

Magazine and Newspaper Articles: Kelly, Michael. "Segregation Anxiety." New Yorker, 20 November 1995, 43-54. Swain, Carol M. "Black-Majority Districts: A Bad Idea." New York Times, 3 June 1993, A21.

Supreme Court Cases: Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969). The number before the "U.S." refers to the volume; the number after is the page number. The "U.S." refers the to Supreme Court Reporter. (District and Circuit Court decisions will have something else instead of U.S. between numbers, e.g. F. 2d or F. Supp.) Even if you found your case on the internet (e.g. on Findlaw or Lexis), you should still use this format as the cite will likely give you this citation format somewhere near the beginning of the case.

Internet Citations

There are lots of ways to cite Internet sources. I am not particular about which one you use as long as you follow certain rules:

Cite the exact URL or Internet site. Do not just cite the general home page. The point is to be able to quickly locate the exact page on which you found your information. Even though it is more lengthy and more complex, give the full cite of the page so that your reader can go directly to it. For example, if you want to cite the Christian Coalition position paper on gambling, you should cite the exact site, http://www.cc.org/issues/gambling.html, not the general Christian Coalition site, http://www.cc.org/. State the date you visited the page. "Visited 30 January 1999." or "Visited January 30, 1999." are both sufficient. Pages unfortunately change often, so it is nice to know when you visited the page. Give the title of the page as well as the Internet site. Simply giving the site or URL is not very informative. People don't speak Internet and you want your paper to be accessible to all. Many pages on the Internet are just replications of paper sources. If this is the case, you should cite it as you would the paper form. For example, if you use an article from the Washington Post, you should simply cite it as you would a normal newspaper article. Sample Bibliographic Form: "Christian Coalition Stand on Gambling." http://www.cc.org/issues/gambling.html. Visited 19 August 1999. Sample Parenthetical Citation: (Christian Coalition Stand on Gambling 1999) or http://www.cc.org/issues/gambling.html 1999). Personally, I prefer the former format as it is more informative.

STATEMENT ON PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is the representation of another person's words and ideas as one's own. This misrepresentation is a breach of ethics that seriously compromises a person's reputation. Professional careers have been ruined by revelations of plagiarism.

Researchers, therefore, must scrupulously acknowledge sources to give proper credit for borrowed materials. The following rules should be observed to make sure that the distinction between one's own words and ideas and those of others is justly maintained. (Of course, submitting a paper that is completely the work of another person is plagiarism in its most extreme form.)

1. Words, phrases, and sentences of another person should be enclosed in quotation marks and footnoted in proper form.

2. Paraphrases and summaries of the ideas of others should be indicated with a footnote. These paraphrases and summaries should not represent merely the rearrangement of sentence elements but should be rewritten in one's own style.

3. Quotations, paraphrases, and summaries should be introduced with the name of the writer being cited.

4. Every item footnoted in the paper (i.e., all sources of others' words and ideas) should appear in the bibliography in proper form.

5. Footnotes should contain all the information required by standard footnote form and specifically indicate the location of the material cited. Page numbers should be checked for accuracy before a paper is submitted; the reader must be able to find the source of the material quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.

A student who plagiarizes all or part of an assignment can expect severe penalties, ranging from failure in that assignment to being recommended for a hearing before a judiciary body of the University. In most cases, a letter will be placed in the student's permanent file.