The regular malaise that manifests itself in the educational evaluation community regarding its methodology, its results, its identity, could well be caused by the difference between its philosophical assumptions and those of its clients. Educational evaluation has inherited the positivist philosophical tradition through ties to American psychology. Its clients almost invariably hold the convictions of the philosophy of common sense, which is fundamentally opposed to posivitism's reduction of persons to "its". The moderate realist philosophical position is not reductionistic in this way. It is open to all methods of scientific investigation, both those approved and disapproved by the rigorous scientific tradition. (Author)