Assessing Outcomes

We often say that one of the problems in Jewish education is that we can't assess outcomes until many years after the end of the programs we are attempting to evaluate.

This article, Generation Z appears in the on-line magazine Tablet. It describes the college years of several people whose names are familiar to us now, and I believe it also raises some interesting questions for us as educators:

• What was it about their college experiences that led to the ongoing involvement of these people in the Jewish world, and in Israel particularly?
• Beit Ephraim still exists, and has a website at which you can learn more about it. What do you think are its strengths? What might be its challenges?
• In your opinion, what kind of student might be attracted to a place like Beit Ephraim?
• What kind of prior Jewish educational experiences do you imagine might lead a college student to be interested in such a program?
• In what way are the curricula and programs of our Jewish educational systems geared toward building the kind of youth who are looking for serious Jewish involvement in their college years?
• How can we do our job better?

I'd love to hear your ideas about this.