What's it like when the participatory evaluator is a "genuine" stakeholder?

In this reflective, analytic story I discuss what it is like to be a parent and an evaluator in a participatory, democratic evaluation of an afterscho ol program. The story tells of tensions between these roles, and how these tensions can instruct participatory evaluators in pursuing goals of democra cy, community, and justice in evaluation. This discussion can be situated a mong a number of recent articles in AJE that have focused on analyses of pa rticipatory or empowerment evaluation.(See Schnoes, Murphy-Berman, & Chambe rs, 2000; and the exchanges between Smith, 1999 and Cousins & Earl, 1999.).