The American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) developed this guide to help you consider evaluation issues likely to arise as you launch ARRA-funded initiatives and other educational reform activities. Many states are already involved in evaluation, so many of the ideas presented here may be familiar. The authors hope that this guide will provide additional information and straightforward strategies to help you integrate evaluation into your educational reform efforts. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is providing states like yours and districts important opportunities to strengthen efforts to improve educational outcomes for all children. This guide does not address all the ways in which you may be using ARRA and other funds to support educational reforms or all the approaches you could use to evaluate ARRA-funded and other educational initiatives in your state. Instead, the guide aims to help you think about opportunities for building evaluation into your ongoing efforts and define your evaluation priorities. Throughout the guide, the authors' intent is to provide easy-to-use tools and resources--including tips and checklists--that you can use as part of an evaluation of most of the educational reform strategies that you are likely to initiate. These tips suggest ways in which you can reduce the need for special data collection efforts and make it easier to combine information from various data sources by building on existing data systems. (Contains 13 figures, 3 tables and 5 footnotes.)