How did PERG begin?
The work of PERG began in 1976, when Lesley University faculty members George Hein and Brenda Engel created an evaluation proposal for the Massachusetts Cultural Education Collaborative (CEC). George Hein had been teaching a Lesley University course on assessing children’s learning and evaluating programs using “informal” methods. Brenda Engel was experimenting with a new type of institutional evaluation in her consulting work. The proposed evaluation involved examining the educational work of more than 30 arts organizations and museum programs coordinated by the CEC, a group of state-sponsored cultural institutions with a mission to assist racial integration of Boston schools. One of George Hein’s students–who also happened to direct the Neighborhood Arts Center, a CEC member–had urged him to take on the project and put his teaching in informal evaluation methods to the test. Evaluation of those thirty programs over the next two years was the beginning of a steady stream of program
