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Flying WILD is measuring the success of its program in the following four ways:

educator feedback;
Teachers participating in Flying WILD training workshops are asked to provide direct feedback on the usefulness and quality of the professional development opportunity. Educators using Flying WILD: An Educator's Guide to Celebrating Birds to help their students host a school bird festival are invited to provide feedback on their festival experience and offered an opportunity to win a trip!

measures of enhanced student knowledge;

Evaluation activities are incorporated into each activity in Flying WILD: An Educator's Guide to Celebrating Birds. A pre-test and post-test of knowledge to be administered to students at locations nationwide will provide one measure of Flying WILD's impact.

a greater number of bird-related action projects completed by students; and

Following the best practices for service-learning, Flying WILD is designing a variety of assessment methods to determine the impact of student participation in bird conservation projects.

more teachers integrating bird education into their curriculum.

The Flying WILD program keeps records of the number of educators trained in the program, their use of the program materials with students, and the number of students they involve in the program.

A formal evaluation report of the recent Flying WILD pilot (funded by EPA's Region 6) is now available. Click here to download a PDF of the full report, or read on for a brief summary of results.

The formal evaluation had two goals:

1) to describe the perceptions of teachers who participated in training designed to prepare them to implement the Flying WILD program;

2) to describe the Houston Initiative--the Flying WILD pilot program implemented at Johnston Middle School in the Houston Independent School District during the first two months of the 2004-2005 school year.

Perceptions of Teachers Participating in Flying WILD Training
Participant Information: N=20; 4 elementary teachers; 11 science teachers; 3 curriculum specialists; 3 informal educators 57.89% teach classes with >75% minority students
100.00%	Agreed "I learned a lot of new content in the subject area or areas I teach."
95.00%	Agreed "I learned new information about birds and their conservation needs. "
95.00%	Agreed "I learned new inforamtion I can use in my classroom."
89.47%	Agreed "I learned new teaching concepts and instructional strategies."
90.00%	Agreed "I learned about materials available for my classroom."

89.47%	Rated Flying WILD: An Educator's Guide to Celebrating Birds as "Good" or "Excellent."
65.00%	Rated festival planning portion of training workshop as "Good" or "Excellent."
75.00%	Reported that work expected during training workshop was "just about right."
90.00%	Reported they are confident they can use Flying WILD activities with their students.
94.74%	Planned to use Flying WILD activities with their students.
72.22%	Planned to conduct a Flying WILD festival.
Perceptions of Teachers Implementing Flying WILD Pilot
Participant Information: N=11; 6 science teachers; 3 mathematics teachers; 1 ESL/French teacher; 1 Health & Phys Ed Teacher 11 participated in school bird festival; 9 had participated in Flying WILD training workshop
70.00%	Agreed "I will use the Flying WILD Guide again."
100.00%	Agreed "I would recommend Flying WILD: An Educator's Guide to Celebrating Birds to a friend."
90.91%	Agreed "Johnston Middle School Teachers had the resource they needed to prepare for, organize, and lead a school bird festival with their students and community."
100.00%	Agreed "The Family Math and Science night helped increase students' knowledge about the conservation needs of migratory birds.
100.00%	Agreed "Either through their participation in the Family Math and Science Night or through other Flying WILD activities, students became involved in school, community, and/or home activities that will benefit bird conservation.

Overall comment: Many teachers indicated that they would have liked more time to plan and prepare for their Family Math and Science Night, the culminating event of their participation in the Flying WILD pilot program.


		For resources designed to help educators evaluate the success of Flying WILD activities in their schools and classrooms, visit our Additional Resources page--and check back, more resources are on the way!
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