Jennifer Greene, the current American Evaluation President, expanded on the theme of Thanksgiving and gratitude.  She posted her comments in the AEA  Newsletter.  I liked them a lot.  I quote them below…

“Thanksgiving is a ‘time out’ from the busyness of daily life, a time for quiet reflection, and a time to contemplate pathways taken and pathways that lie ahead.

In somewhat parallel fashion, evaluation can also offer a ‘time out’ from the busyness and routine demands of daily life, notably for evaluation stakeholders and especially for program developers, administrators, and staff. Our educative traditions in particular are oriented toward goals of learning, enlightenment, reflection, and redirection. These traditions, which are anchored in the evaluation ideals of Lee Cronbach and Carol Weiss, aspire to provide a data-based window into how well the logic of a program translates to particular experiences in particular contexts, into promising practices evident in some contexts even if they are not part of the program design, into who is being well served by the program and who remains overlooked. Our educative practices position evaluation as a lens for critical reflection (emphasis added) on the quality of a program’s design and implementation, for reconsideration of the urgency of the needs the program is intended to address, for contemplation of alternative pathways that could be taken, and thus broadly as a vehicle by which society learns about itself (from Cronbach’s 95 theses).

She concludes her comments with a statement that I have lived by and believed throughout my career as an evaluator.  “…I also believe that education remains the most powerful of all social change alternatives.”

Education is the great equalizer and evaluation works hand-in-hand with education.