The Role of Evaluation in Affirmative Action-Type Programs

This article analyzes two cases of evaluation programs involving the Palestinian minority in Israel from the perspective of social justice and responsibility. The first focuses on the evaluation of a Pre-Academic Preparatory Program (PAPP) of minority students in Sakhnin College. The second focuses on the evaluation of Equal Opportunities for Arab Minority Students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. This article concludes that evaluation could be conceptualized as a promoter of social justice. The article suggests that the contribution of participatory-responsive evaluation is limited and maybe marginal. The article concludes that evaluation for social justice should be only a step in a longer process, which should feed into decision making afterward in order to change and improve policies and programs, as the case of PAPP suggests. Eventually, we conclude that evaluation played a role in promoting social justice in both systems.