To The Editor:

I have spent my entire career in the human services and education sectors, mostly in nonprofit organizations serving children and families as well as consulting to programs evaluating their work’s effectiveness.

Thus, I appreciate the challenges involved in this sort of work and exemplified in Community In Schools’ recent presentation of its program impacts in partnership with the East Penn School District.

It is true that in work with diverse groups of people and complex organizations such as schools “small effects” are common and sometimes the best one can generate. However, the CIS data presented to the EPSD School Board appear well within margins of error and likely not even substantial enough to be considered “small effects.”

I would urge the EPSD School Board to ask hard questions about this contracted work and review it rigorously.

Roger D. Phillips

Alburtis