Jumpstart

Jumpstart’s performance management system is more multifaceted and rigorous than its counterparts in the nonprofit sector. Due to the importance that Lieberman and Fusco placed on collecting and interpreting data to inform decision-making early on, Jumpstart was able to adequately measure impact while aligning measurements with Jumpstart’s theory of change. That being said, Jumpstart’s performance management system is not perfect and the following paragraphs highlight various strengths and weaknesses of the three indicators.

The School Success Outcomes indicator, which measures improvements in reading and social skills of Jumpstart participants, is strong in the sense that it closely aligns with curriculum and impact assessment materials. However, while lauded for its ability to easily compare Jumpstart children versus others in Head Start programs, SSO has measurement shortcomings that cloud the true effect of the programming. For example, the case mentions that Jumpstart used School Success indicators to select children performing slightly below their peers and retests these children following successful completion of the program. Unfortunately, this practice compromises the results because it is unclear whether students who had performed poorly on the initial test were truly struggling or simply having a “bad day.” If the latter were true, these students would likely perform more closely to the class average in the retest, regardless of whether or not they received additional tutoring. That is, because children were not randomly assigned to the Jumpstart program, it is unclear whether improvements were due to the program or were simply noise. The longitudinal study undertaken by Jumpstart suffers from the same problems as the before/after indicators; without random assignment, it is impossible to determine whether the two groups had similar motivations entering the study. Still, given monetary and time constraints (not to mention the ethical issues), I...