What is the opinion on this? Please raise thoughtful questions, analyze relevant issues, building on ideas, synthesize across this information, expanding the perspective, and appropriately challenge assumptions and perspectives.

Please help me out with this question. I need assistance on this. See what is written below in order to answer the question.

High Schools typically have many different programs. The benchmarks used to determine the effectiveness of any particular program depends on the type of program you are looking at. For example, the High School in my district has a robotics program called Windup Robotics. To determine what benchmark can be used to measure the effectiveness of this program, we first need to determine what it is we are actually measuring. What makes an effective program? What does "effective" mean in the context of a robotics club?

To determine if a program is effective, we first need to look at the mission, objectives, and goals of a program. According to page 100 of our text, the mission of the program answers the question "why does the entity exist?" Goals are defined by our text as "broad ends toward which entities direct their efforts" and objectives are defined as "specific targets for anticipated accomplishments or outcomes that move the agency toward achieving its goals." According to their website, the robotics club at our high school has the mission of cultivating "interest, understanding, and skills in the fields of engineering and technology," and a number of goals, including "to teach engineering, science and technology," to build "successful, technically challenging, and competitive robots," and community outreach. One can measure a program's effectiveness by measuring the extent to which it achieves is mission, goals and objectives. Benchmarks are helpful in making this measurement.

For the local robotics club, we can use academic performance and career placement as benchmarks. For example, how many of the program's participants are achieving high grades in high school courses that deal with engineering and technology? How many of these students are going on to study these subjects in college, and how many are going on to have good paying, satisfying careers in engineering and technology? If we are to measure the effectiveness of the program by the extent to which it "teaches engineering, science and technology" the benchmark of academic and career success would be a very good indicator. Another good benchmark to measure the effectiveness of this program would be to do comparative analysis, as suggested on page 119, last paragraph, of our text. The local robotics program can compare itself to other robotics programs in the area to see how it performing. Because one of the goals of the program is to be competitive, one benchmark that can be used is the ratio of contests entered versus contests won. If the local robotics program is winning the highest percent of contests it enters, one can conclude that the program is successful. Another good benchmark would be measuring program participation from year to year. The mission of the program, after all, is to cultivate interest in the discipline of robotics. If there are more students participating in the program this year than last year and the year before, the program then appears to be operating effectively.

Other benchmarks that can be used to measure the effectiveness of high school programs are the following:

Academic scores when compared to national scores on standardized tests for academic programs.

Wins versus loses for sports programs.

Participation rates for clubs, such as chess club, Spanish club, ski club, etc.