"Structurally, Spaulding's text is a smashing success. The presentation and organization of the content, which is a basic introduction to the foundations of program evaluation and the stand-alone case studies, provide optimum opportunities to support authentic learning about a diverse set of topics central to the practice of program evaluation. Spaulding developed "frameworks" to guide each case study. Consistent across cases, the framework includes information about the evaluator, the program, the evaluation plan, the summary of evaluation activities and findings, and the final thoughts. This technique provides both instructors and students the necessary scaffolding to build on students' prior knowledge to develop a fund of knowledge specific to the practice of program evaluation.

"As a junior faculty member responsible for teaching evaluation courses, I would have no way of personally accumulating the number and diversity of program evaluation examples to be used in my course of the caliber contained in this text. Moreover, as program evaluation courses increasingly become core curricula in diverse graduate programs around the world this is no trivial contribution made by Spaulding." – American Journal of Evaluation, September 2009