Evaluation has been defined by Blaine Worthen and J. R. Sanders (1973, Educational Evaluation: Theory and Practice. Worthington, Ohio: C.A. Jones Publishing Company, p. 19) as making a "determination of the worth of a thing." The thought of evaluating a community is one that, at first hearing, is likely to give any anthropologist a cold chill. But actually, communities are evaluated all the time; the evolutionary socioeconomic processes of a region continually, although impersonally, evaluate communities. In the process, some are selected to live and others to die and become ghost towns (or future archaeological discoveries). My region, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, is filled with towns that have been evaluated by this process. While they are not ghost towns, they have been reduced to two road signs announcing their names, a tavern, and a deserted general store. This type of evaluation is occurring through the rural areas of the world. It results in rural depopulation and the demise of rural community forms which have been highly valued historically. We might call this process a summative evaluation of a community—a very final one with little chance of successful appeal.
Reflections on learning about Australasian evaluation theory and practice