President Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiative” has been
subject of a lot of political controversy. But amid all
the talk about what it might do to the Constitution or
for people in desperate straits, there is very little
information about a fundamental question: do
“faith-based” programs work?
Do they work? How could we even tell? Those are
questions that Rob Fischer has been considering
closely. Rob (Ph.D., Vanderbilt) manages and conducts
evaluation studies at the Center on Urban Poverty and
Social Change of Case’s Mandel School of Applied Social
Sciences (MSASS). He is one of the nation’s experts on
those awkward questions. They are awkward because if
it’s hard to tell if “faith-based” programs work, it may
be similarly hard to tell if OTHER programs work.
Raising the question of why governments spend money on
either kind!
Robert Fischer serves as Senior Research Associate at
the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences of Case
Western Reserve University. In this capacity, Dr.
Fischer coordinates the evaluation of the Cuyahoga
County Early Childhood Initiative, a three-year, $40
million effort, that includes home visiting, children’s
health, and day care components. From 1994-2001, Dr.
Fischer served as Director of Program Evaluation for
Families First, a nonprofit family and children's agency
in metropolitan Atlanta, conducting evaluations of
family interventions dealing with issues such as
divorce, teen pregnancy and parenting, homelessness.
Fischer also previously served as an Adjunct Professor
at the School of Social Work at Georgia State University
in Atlanta, teaching a course in program evaluation. Dr.
Fischer has presented the findings from his research at
national and international conferences in the evaluation
and social work research fields and has published these
results in various professional journals. He also
co-authored a chapter in the Handbook of Practical
Program Evaluation on the synthesis of research results.
Dr. Fischer is an active member of the American
Evaluation Association and currently serves as the
co-chair of the Human Services Evaluation topical
interest group. He is a submission reviewer for several
professional journals, including Families in Society and
Research on Social Work Practice. Fischer has served as
a technical consultant on the National Evaluation of
Family Support Programs being conducted for the U.S.
Congress, and has consulted with City Year, City Cares,
and the Atlanta Alliance on Developmental Disabilities.
Dr. Fischer received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt
University in policy development and program evaluation
and holds a masters degree from Vanderbilt’s Peabody
College of Education, and a bachelors degree from Duke
University, both in public policy studies.