Outdoor School for All! Diverse Programming and Outcomes in Oregon is a multi-site, participatory evaluation effort building knowledge about current outdoor school programming and its intended outcomes.  The evaluation project and team strive for cultural responsiveness and employ an iterative design-based approach to evaluation.    

• Are you interested in the academic and behavioral outcomes of outdoor schools throughout Oregon?
• Are you engaged in multi-site, participatory or culturally responsive evaluation?
• Do you want to take a deeper look into outdoor school or simply outdoor education? We consider Equity, community support, Social Emotional Learning, Environmental Literacy, and 21st Century Skills.

At the Oregon State University Extension Service Outdoor School program office, our vision is for every student in Oregon to have a transformative outdoor school experience — one that is inclusive, meaningful and high-quality. We know that engaging students in meaningful and culturally relevant experiences in the out-of-doors contributes to academic success.  We also know that to support outdoor school programs in making positive programmatic shifts, program evaluation is critical. There have been limited quantifiable measures of these outcomes statewide to date, and to that end, we are pleased to announce the release of Outdoor School for All! Diverse Programming and Outcomes in Oregon 2019 Evaluation Report. 

To learn more about outdoor schools statewide, we encourage you to read/review the 2019 evaluation report, which involved:

• 39 outdoor schools of differing length, programming and size
• 182 teachers
• 4,462 students

All participated during the 2018/19 school year.

We also encourage you to visit our website (outdoorschool.oregonstate.edu), to learn more about the Oregon State University Extension Service Outdoor School program and how we're supporting the outdoor school community. Please don't hesitate to contact us at outdoorschool@oregonstate.edu should you have questions or comments regarding this document or the program in general. 

Primary author and evaluator can be reached here: steve@eerise.org