The Greening of Detroit - TreeKeepers Kids

The Greening of Detroit’s TreeKeepers Kids (TKK) is a place-based education program that facilitates the use of Outdoor Classrooms for environmental education in Detroit Public Schools.  The evaluation of this program, conducted in 2007 by PEER Associates, focused first and foremost on staff utilization in order to ensure that it would be useful to The Greening of Detroit to improve its programs.  Main questions of the evaluation explored how TKK impacted educators and students, and whether the programs worked best together or separately.  PEER Associates applied a utilization-focused collaborative approach, constantly involving The Greening of Detroit staff.  PEER Associates made use of multiple methods to gather their data from teachers, principles, students, Detroit Public Schools personnel, and The Greening of Detroit/TKK staff.  Methods included surveys, focus groups, monthly trackers, and interviews.  Results of the evaluation include a rubric for school selection, which allows the The Greening of Detroit to select schools for the TKK program based on a set of school characteristics that have been linked with TKK program success.