Young people rely on positive and caring adults in order to reach their goals. Our recently concluded evaluation of the Power of One mentoring program at Anne Arundel County Public Schools demonstrates just that: Youth experiencing homelessness thrive when adults invest in their education and overall well being. We applaud the tireless work of pupil and social workers at the county and schools who ensure that all students graduate from high school and enter post-secondary education. …
News and Updates
Career Navigators are heroes without capes
As we wrap up our Department of Labor - TAACCCT grant evaluation contracts, a note of appreciation to all the career navigators we have met with / spoken to in the past five years in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma to learn about their tireless and often self-less work with community college students. They are heroes without capes. …
An infographic is worth a thousand words
Telling a grant's impact story using data visualization is something we do well at MNA. For our multi-site, Department of Labor-funded, Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant (2014-18) in Arizona, we have developed a few infographics to inform and present evidence at each of the four sites on what works in workforce development and community college training in the area of advanced manufacturing. These data metrics include: Participants’ educational and …
Seeking an education finance statistician or expert to partner on a proposal
MN Associates, Inc. (MNA) is planning to bid on an education policy / school finance proposal that is due soon. We are interested to partner with a part-time consultant (location not critical) who has extensive research / evaluation knowledge and work experience in completing the following for the project, if awarded: 1. Cost modeling at the state/ federal levels 2. Calculating school funding formulae at the state/ federal levels 3. Education policy (early learning systems and processes) 4. …
What are we, if not, good storytellers?
The dog days of summer, oftentimes, for program evaluators means cranking up evaluation reports for our clients. This also means writing and editing pages of reports that oh so often don’t get read or reviewed completely. Over the years, after having just completed 180 technical reports, we have learned that writing a lengthy report does not necessarily mean writing an effective one. At MNA, we are all about producing quality work that has an impact on learning. Communicating the right …
MNA for the Arts!
As a lover of all things art and culture and an amateur painter of Madhubani art form, when an evaluation opportunity to work with the arts came knocking, I simply couldn’t pass it up! Since 2017, MNA has been working with Arts Every Day (AED), a Baltimore-based non-profit arts advocacy organization on their NEA-funded planning grant to improve equity and access in the arts for all the City Schools students. Known as the Baltimore Arts Education Initiative (BAEI), we have been actively engaged …
MNA goes to FL (again)!
MNA is contracted by the Pinellas County Public Schools (FL) to evaluate their new pilot Elevating Excellence gifted and talented program this summer. The work is supported by the Pinellas Education Foundation. This new project will extend our ongoing 5-year evaluation work with the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and the K-8 Henderson School in Boca Raton (FL) which was funded by the US Department of Education's Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented grant program in 2017. Looking forward to …
Training hats are on for team MNA!
MNA in collaboration with Michelle Lynn Peters, Associate Professor, Research Methods at University of Houston (Clear Lake) will go to Idaho! Well, virtually. We have been invited to conduct a training on quantitative research models and research design, tools and techniques to the staff of the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) headed by Mr. Rakesh Mohan in June. We are excited for this training opportunity and will be sure to brush up our online teaching skills in quantitative research …
MNA to conduct a 2-day hands-on grant writing workshop for STEM and social science faculty at Dillard University in fall
MNA extends its portfolio. We have been invited to conduct a 2-day intensive grant / proposal writing workshop for STEM and social sciences faculty at Dillard University (LA) in early fall. We will draw from our vast experience in grant writing assistance as well as completing research and program evaluations of several federally funded programs since 2004. Looking forward to this new opportunity and learning experience. …
Dashboard Developed for Front Range Community College, Fort Collins (CO)
At MNA, we take time to better understand all our clients' needs especially when it comes to communicating evaluation results more effectively to a wider audience. One of our clients, Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, CO, received a USDE-funded Title III Institutional Capacity Grant last fall. MNA was hired as their external evaluators. In order to better assess their 14 program objectives across five years in multiple locations, we have developed a data dashboard to visually …