Sunday, February 19, 2006

SAGE vs. the MPCP

Brian Fraley does a service by linking to the WPRI study of the SAGE program. I know that some people are going to start the "WPRI is right wing" chant but the conclusions of its report really don't seem all that different from the more recent WCER evaluation. It is far from clear that there is any more evidence of SAGE's effectiveness than there is of the MPCP. In fact it might just be that MPCP has stronger empirical support than SAGE since SAGE's positive evaluations seem to come from people who contracted with DPI for the evaluation and DPI is hardly disinterested. Yet we're spending just as much on SAGE (which is not just a Milwaukee program) than on the MPCP.

Perhaps the Doyle/Gard deal should be amended to include a more rigorous and independent evaluation of SAGE.

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