Culturally Responsive Evaluation: Listening Before Measuring

Dr. Stacey Merola and Bill Pate sit down with Dr. Toks Fashola, research professor at American University, to unpack what it really means to do culturally responsive program evaluation. Dr. Fashola breaks down how spurious variables can quietly become confounding ones by using everyday examples like parking tickets in Baltimore and medication adherence in diabetes care and explains why understanding a community's history and context is essential to getting evaluation right. Drawing on her own experience with an after-school program in Baltimore, she makes the case for treating stakeholders as co-designers rather than subjects, and for asking whether disappointing results point to a flawed program rather than a flawed population. The conversation touches on the work of Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori as early models of culturally responsive practice and closes with a bigger idea: that done well, evaluation isn't just a technical exercise — it's a path toward social justice and mutual learning for evaluators and communities alike. Additional notes from this episode can be found here.  The podcast music was written and produced by Stacey Merola. The podcast artwork was created by Zoe Targino.