Ernest R. House is an American academic specializing in program evaluation and education policy. He is a Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder since 2002. House was a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1985 to 2001. Previously, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1969-1985). He has been a visiting scholar at UCLA, Harvard, University of New Mexico, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1999-2000), as well as in England, Australia, Spain, Sweden, Austria, and Chile.
A.B. in English, Washington University, 1959; M.S. in Secondary Education, Southern Illinois University, 1964; Ed. D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1968.
Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Evaluation, University of California at Los Angeles, Summer, 1976Scholar-in-Residence, Institute for Educational Policy Studies, Harvard University, Fall 1980Visiting Scholar, Institute for Advanced Study, Vienna, Austria, March, 1993.Visiting Scholar, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, 1997Visiting professor, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, 2002-2009Phi Beta KappaFord Foundation Fellow (England), 1975Harold E. Lasswell Prize (with William Madura) presented by Policy Sciences (1989).Paul Lazarsfeld Award for Evaluation Theory, for lifetime contributions to evaluation research and theory, awarded by, 1990.Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, CA, 1999-2000Selected evaluation studies direct by House include the following:
Illinois Gifted Program for the Illinois Legislature (1968-1972)Assessment of the Michigan Accountability Program for the National Education Association (1974)Critique of the National Follow-Through Evaluation for the Ford Foundation (1977)Auditor of the Promotional Gates Program for the Mayor's Office, New York CityAssessment of environmental education policies in Europe for OECD (1992)Five-year study of the Evaluation Office of the National Science Foundation (1991-1996)House served as Editor of New Directions in Program Evaluation (1982-1985), and as a featured columnist in Evaluation Practice (1984-1989)
Among his many contributions are the following books:
The Politics of Educational Innovation (1974)Survival in the Classroom (with S. Lapan, 1978)Evaluating with Validity (originally published in 1980 and re-issued in 2010).Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Charisma: The Rise and Fall of the Push/Excel Program (1988)Professional Evaluation: Social Impact and Political Consequences (1993)Schools for Sale: Why Free Market Policies Won't Improve America's Schools, and What Will (1998)Values in Evaluation and Social Research (with K. Howe, 1999)Regression to the Mean: A Novel of Evaluation Politics (2007)In Marvin C. Alkin's book Evaluation Roots: A Wider Perspective of Theorists' Views and Influences, House's contributions to evaluation theory were seen as closely related to the work of Robert E. Stake and Michael Scriven.
Evaluating with Validity (1980) is a very important contribution in the early development of evaluation theory and practice, as evidenced by the fact that it was reissued in 2010 and that three central chapters have been made available through open access by the American Evaluation Association.
Federal Court Monitor, Denver Bilingual Case, 1999-2005Editorial Board, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Association, 1979–81Editorial Advisory Board, Evaluation Studies Review Annual, SAGE Publications, 1981-1990Editorial Board, New Directions for Program Evaluation, Evaluation Research Society, 1981Editor-in-Chief (with Ronald Wooldridge) New Directions for Program Evaluation Journal of the Evaluation Research Society, 1982-85.Editorial Board, Evaluation Practice, 1990-1997Editorial Board, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 1993-2003Editorial Board, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Association, 1994-1997Editorial Board, New Directions for Program Evaluation, American Evaluation Association, 1993-Editorial Board, Gifted Child Quarterly, 1993-1997Editorial Board, Policy Annals, 1993-Editorial Board, Evaluation: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice, (British) 1994-Editorial Board, Heuristics, (Spanish) 1997-Consulting Editor, Falmer Press book series on Educational Policy, 1986–90Advisory Board, Journal of Education Policy, 1986-
