Balancing federal and local evaluations of federally-funded programs

Some researchers have suggested that both federal and local studies of early childhood programs could be improved by delegating a portion of the responsibility for federally funded national evaluations to the local level so that local project staff have important roles in national studies. This article describes some of the ways in which the federal government has decentralized the responsibility for national evaluations of federally-funded early childhood programs, the methods used in local evaluation studies, and the strengths and weaknesses of centralized and decentralized national evaluations.