Fairchild Garden’s Growing Beyond Earth: Year Two Evaluation Report 2017-2018

During the school year of 2017-2018, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (Fairchild) implemented the second year of a four-year project entitled: Growing Beyond Earth (GBE). NASA is providing funding support for project implementation as well as an external project evaluation. The evaluation activities conducted this year were focused on understanding project implementation and assessing project outcomes using data collected between September 2017 and May 2018. This report’s findings and accompanying recommendations inform next year’s project implementation and evaluation activities.

Evaluation results indicate that Growing Beyond Earth has had a another successful year of implementation—from both an implementation and outcomes perspective. GBE continues to generate evidence of positive outcomes for students, NASA, and teachers. Overall, evaluation results are consistent with last year and provide further evidence to support the results initially identified last year. Results continue to be consistent across the various data collection methods and across participant groups. During this second year of implementation an estimated 5,550 middle and high school students in 117 schools participated under the guidance of 135 teachers and Fairchild project staff.