Azzam, T. , & Levine, B. (2014). Negotiating truth, beauty, and justice: A politically respon- sive approach. In J. C. Griffth & B. Montrosse-Moorhead (Eds.), Revisiting truth, beauty, and justice: Evaluating with validity in the 21st century. New Directions for Evaluation, 142, 57–70. 5 Negotiating Truth, Beauty, and Justice: A Politically Responsive Approach Tarek Azzam, Bret Levine Abstract Evaluation design and implementation are not technocratic exercises, but are processes that require negotiations with stakeholders and careful design. This chapter focuses on the nontechnical factors that affect these processes and dis- cusses cases and studies to illustrate their infuence. The chapter concludes by introducing the concept of politically responsive evaluation as an organizing frame to help evaluators consider some of the nontechnical issues that infuence evaluations.  Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Asso- ciation. W hen refecting on a way to begin this chapter, it may be most appropriate to describe an evaluation experience that sparked many of the ideas described throughout this chapter. This was an evaluation of an after-school program that aimed to increase the math skills of elementary school students in a low-socioeconomic community in Los Angeles. This program was proud of the fact that they taught math in a creative manner and aimed to increase conceptual understanding of math while focusing on certain math areas, such as geometry and measurement. As part of the evaluation, we were able to conduct a randomized control trial, in which we randomly assigned schools to treatment and control con- ditions. We also worked with the program on developing a measure cap- turing key programmatic outcomes. The program and the school district NEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, no. 142, Summer 2014  Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ev.20085 57