Conducting an Outcome Evaluation of Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Kids’ Marketplace Curriculum

Statement of the Problem: In 2003, Heather Greenwood, an Extension Agent within Virginia Cooperative Extension, created the Kids’ Marketplace curriculum. Since that time, the materials have undergone one revision in 2015 and have been used statewide in educating youth on financial literacy. The current curriculum includes an evaluation tool that asks participants to choose “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” to several questions surrounding whether or not they learned a specific skill or completed certain tasks within the program. While this information has consistently been used to create statewide impact statements, the questions asked of students are not correlated with the stated program objectives in a meaningful way and cannot show whether the program is teaching youth the desired outcomes.