Three pre-eminent children’s museums in the Puget Sound area have been working together since 2016 as the Tri-Museum Early Learning Collaborative. Their goal is to expand early learning opportunities and school readiness outcomes, especially in under-resourced communities. They engaged Praxis to build their evaluation capabilities and capacity to learn together, while increasing the equity and effectiveness of their programs. 

In the first year, we improved their survey tools and processes for assessing outcomes of their play-based, parent-child programs. Over the next few years, the focus of learning evolved along with the Museums’ growing evaluation capacity. The Museums are now able to dig more deeply into fundamental questions about how their programs work, and how they meet the needs of families in culturally responsive and strengths-based ways. 

In 2020, Praxis is leading their developmental evaluation strategy to expand the role of community partnership to reach equity goals and innovate distance-adapted programs (due to COVID-19) that are consistent with the Museums’ shared principles of learning through interactive play.