About Dr. Danks
My name is Dr. Shelby Danks, and I am a measurement theorist and evaluator with 20 years of experience in education, with 10 years of experience on the Board of Examiners for the National Baldrige Excellence Program, Panel of Judges for the Quality Texas Foundation, Board of Examiners for the Missouri Quality Award, Peer Reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission, and as an accreditation reviewer for AdvancED.
I launched ARKEN RESEARCH at www.arkenresearch.com as a labor of love to help meet the growing needs of school districts who seek evidence of what is working in their own contexts.
In addition to supporting ARKEN, I currently serve as the Director of Impact for Illustrative Mathematics (IM), a nonprofit curriculum and professional learning organization, where I lead a multi-pronged strategy to measure the impact of professional learning and curriculum on teaching and learning. I led the development of the IM Curriculum Innovation Configuration Map, the IM Teacher Self-Assessment, and the IM Student Mathematical Flourishing Rubric. Before my time at IM, I served as a Managing Researcher at McREL International, where I developed rubrics, maturity models, and implementation measures for clients such as PBLWorks, Raise Your Hand Texas, Discovery Education, The Holdsworth Center, New Schools for New Orleans, the William Paterson College of Education, NanoLink, Music for All, and local school districts.
About this blog
Throughout my career evaluating professional learning, educational programs, and organizational effectiveness, I’ve learned that there are many creepy crawlies (both psychometric and practical) that lurk underneath Likert-scaled instruments. Having seen their myriad uses and misuses, I tread with caution when using such tools, particularly when making higher-stakes decisions. Yet I still believe in the power of self-report data as a way to gather evidence about what is working and can be improved upon in processes, people, or resources.
The purpose of this blog is to share what few lessons I have learned (the hard way, of course!) about measuring and evaluating the impact of programs and offerings in educational organizations.
Let’s bust up our boring surveys and explore innovative tools that that empower stakeholders in the journey to excellence!
About ARKEN RESEARCH
ARKEN delivers research and measurement solutions that catalyze educational transformation.
ARKEN was founded on the premise that all organizations should have access to the evidence they need about their people, processes, and resources to ignite their transformation or sustainability.
We focus on equity by building self-assessments, custom measurement tools, and efficacy studies at an affordable price point so that all districts – large and small – can afford to gather evidence about what is working in their own contexts.
Click one of the resources below to learn more about how you can ASSESS, TRANSFORM, and SUSTAIN, or visit www.arkenresearch.com to learn more.