This chapter presents a call to action grounded in a graduate student clinical program at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison. The WCER Clinical Program (wcerclinicalprogram.org) creates a reciprocal space where graduate students and community‐based partners develop and practice connections between research, evaluation, practice, and policy through applied projects in the community, in real time, in real contexts, and with real impact. The Evaluation Clinic evolved from two primary needs: systematic and applied learning in Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) for graduate students in the School of Education; and accessible, high‐quality evaluation from WCER for local community‐based partners. Our ultimate vision is that people and organizations have the capacity to critically reflect on and mobilize knowledge to support equitable opportunities and outcomes.

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The theme of the special issue decolonizing evaluation: towards a fifth paradigm,  an initiative of the International Evaluation academy (IEA), was inspired by the concerns that while evaluation reports largely tell stories of success, on the ground there is minimal change, communities remain impoverished, interventions cause harm to the environment and evaluation allow that to happen.