About InSites > Board of Directors / Staff > Beverly Parsons

Beverly Parsons

Executive Director, InSites

Beverly Parsons is Executive Director of InSites, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization. InSites' mission is to assist education and social service systems through evaluation, planning, development, and research with special attention to systemic change and partnerships. She holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Educational Research and Evaluation (University of Colorado) and a B.S. in Medical Technology (University of Wisconsin).

In her sixteen years at InSites, Dr. Parsons has worked with initiatives to improve preschool through university education systems as well as programs in the health and social services fields. Among other evaluation activities, she currently serves as the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation grant to build evaluation capacity among community college faculty through Communities of Learning, Inquiry, and Practice (CLIPs). She also is a consultant to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation on cluster and initiative evaluation. She has been the lead evaluator for several federally funded grants in the areas of science, mathematics, and technology education and is currently serving in that role for two such grants. She directed a six-year evaluation of a national initiative to redesign teacher professional development (operated by the NEA Foundation) and is in the twelfth year of conducting evaluations of national programs to support Asian studies in U.S. schools funded by a private foundation. She has served as a consultant to the South African Department of Education on assessment policy, conducted evaluations in China and Japan, and assisted teams in 12 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and states of the former Soviet Union in program evaluation and redesign of curriculum.

Dr. Parsons was at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States (ECS) for 10 years. (ECS is a national interstate compact that assists governors, legislators, and state education and business leaders to improve education through leadership and policy.) From 1987-91 Dr. Parsons led ECS' comprehensive effort (in partnership with the Coalition of Essential Schools) to bring about fundamental changes in the education system at school, district, state, and university levels to support enhanced teaching and learning. During her earlier years at ECS she was responsible for ECS' administrative and outreach functions, and served as Director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Much of Dr. Parsons’ extensive background in testing, assessment, evaluation, and research was gained at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (Portland, OR) where she served as Director of the Assessment and Measurement Program. Earlier in her career, she worked on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and held university adjunct teaching positions.

Dr. Parsons has published, led seminars, and spoken extensively to practitioners and policymakers about systemic change, evaluation, learning outcomes, curriculum, instructional methods, assessment, and policy development. She is the author of Evaluative Inquiry: How Evaluation can Promote Student Success (Corwin Press, 2002). She is currently on the board of the American Evaluation Association. She has been on the board of the National Council on Measurement in Education and a reviewer for the Journal of Educational Measurement and Evaluation Practice. She has a certification through the Human Systems Dynamics Institute and as a Appreciative Inquiry facilitator. She has a strong background in both quantitative and qualitative research methods.