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News

• Uncovering ARRA’s Research Requirements

  December 17, 2009

  

  Researchers at Empirical Education provided a detailed overview of the various research themes and requirements of the ARRA stimulus initiatives with state department of education officials during their December 9th webinar entitled, “Meet Stimulus Funds’ Research Requirements with Confidence.“ The webinar gave specific examples of how states may start planning their applications, building research partnerships, as well as an overview of the ED’s current thinking about building local research capacity. The initiatives that were discussed included Race to the Top, Enhancing Education Through Technology, Investing in Innovation, Title I School Improvement Grants, and State Longitudinal Data Systems.

• Report completed on the effectiveness of MathForward

  November 13, 2009

  

  Empirical Education assisted Richardson Independent School District (RISD) in conducting an evaluation of the MathForward algebra readiness program published by Texas Instruments. RISD implemented MathForward in their 7th and 8th grade general mathematics and 9th grade Algebra I classes. The research employed an interrupted time series design comparing existing student achievement scores with MathForward to student achievement scores from the three years prior to the introduction of MathForward.

  The results of this four-year study suggest that 7th grade students scored, on average, 11 percentile points higher with MathForward than the 7th grade students from the three previous years without MathForward. A similar result for the 8th grade suggests that students participating in MathForward scored, on average, 9 percentile points higher. While the trend did not hold for 9th grade, further exploration suggests that 9th grade students whose teachers had 3 years experience using MathForward scored higher than 9th grade students whose teachers did not use MathForward.

  The report further illustrates how an interrupted time series design can be used to study a program as it is rolled out over several years. This research will be presented at the 2010 AERA conference in Denver, Colorado (Friday, April 30 — Tuesday, May 4).

• Empirical Education assists the Instructional Research Group (IRG)

  November 1, 2009

  

  Starting this winter, Empirical Education will assist the Instructional Research Group (IRG) with their project, Teacher Quality Study: An Investigation of the Impacts of Teacher Study Groups as a Means to Enhance the Quality of Reading Instruction for First Graders in High Poverty Schools in Two States. The project, focusing on first-grade reading instruction in high poverty schools with large ethnic minority populations, will be funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The role Empirical Education will play in this partnership is to obtain student demographic data from IRG; to survey teachers; to enter, check, and warehouse data; and to provide data files and report summaries to IRG.

• i3 Request for Proposals Calls for New Approaches to Rigorous Evaluation

  October 26, 2009

  

  In the strongest indication yet that the new administration is serious about learning from its multi-billion-dollar experience, the draft notice for the Invest in Innovation (i3) grants sets out new requirements for research and evaluation. While it is not surprising that the U.S. Department of Education requires scientific evidence for programs asking for funds for expansion and scaling up, it is important to note that strong evidence is now being defined not just in terms of rigorous methods but also in terms of “studies that in total include enough of the range of participants and settings to support scaling up to the State, regional, or national level.” This requirement for generalizability is a major step toward sponsoring research that has value for practical decisions. Along the same lines, high quality evaluations are those that include implementation data and performance feedback.

  The draft notice also includes recognition of an important research design: “interrupted time series.” While not acceptable under the current What Works Clearinghouse criteria, this method—essentially looking for a change in a series of measures taken before and after implementing a new program—has enormous practical application for schools systems with solid longitudinal data systems.

  Finally, we notice that ED is requiring that all evaluators cooperate with broader national efforts to combine evidence from multiple sources and will provide technical assistance to evaluators to assure consistency among researchers. They want to be sure at the end of the process they have useful evidence about what worked, what didn’t, and why.

• Growth at Empirical Education is More than Just Statistical

  September 1, 2009

  

  We are growing! Empirical Education is excited to announce a recent expansion in our company. Over the summer, we have had the pleasure of adding five new members to our team, rounding out our number to 30 total employees. The addition of four members to our research department is a vital step in beginning work on our new projects taking place during the 2009-2010 school year. The statistician joining our analysis team will work closely with the engineering team to help streamline our MeasureResults processes.

  In addition to enriching our staff, we are also increasing our space. We acquired a third office unit in our Palo Alto building this summer, and we are busily readying it for a move-in. Meanwhile, we are remaining quite cozy in our two current offices.

  We view this expansion as a glimpse of what the future will hold for our company, and we look forward to introducing you to some of our new faces. Feel free to stop by our office anytime for a guided tour.

• Poway District Using MeasureResults

  August 17, 2009

  

  With the new school year approaching, we are excited to announce a partnership with MeasureResults’ newest user, Poway Unified School District (PUSD). With the help of MeasureResults, PUSD educators will design and conduct their own program evaluations, while outsourcing the analytics and reporting functions to MeasureResults’ automated analysis engine. Planned study designs include an “interrupted time series,” which compares current achievement levels to levels from several years prior to the introduction of the program under evaluation. Plans also include a comparison group study which, by matching classrooms that are using the program with similar classrooms that are not, can estimate the difference that the new program has made. Special analyses will determine whether the program benefits various subgroups of students (e.g. English language learners) more than others. We anticipate that PUSD’s valuable product feedback and input will enable us to make ongoing improvements to MeasureResults’ functionality and usability.

• Empirical Education Lends Expertise to the Software Industry

  June 10, 2009

  

  Empirical Education continued its active involvement as an associate member of Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), participating in its 9^th annual Ed Tech Industry Summit and helping to draft a set of guidelines for provider-sponsored research on educational technology products and service.

  At SIIA’s San Francisco conference held May 3-5, Dr. Denis Newman discussed Empirical Education’s experience in state and local experimental evaluations as a panelist in a session addressing technology-based assessment tools entitled “Harvesting Information from Assessment to Support the Learner and the Educator.” Other panelists representing SRI and CTB/McGraw Hill brought their expertise in testing to a discussion of the differences between formative and summative assessments and how data from such assessments are used to inform decision-making at various levels: teacher, school, district, and state. Dr. Newman’s remarks drew the discussion into technology trends such as longitudinal data systems, growth scales, and value-add analysis and the need to apply statistical processes that are not yet commonly part of school data systems. The full PowerPoint presentation and summary can be found on SIIA’s webpage.

  For the past year, SIIA has also supported a working group consisting of members with interest and expertise in research and evaluation. Dr. Newman was asked to participate as co-chair and has been working with the other group members to complete a set of guidelines that can provide guidance in designing scientific evaluations, given the particular characteristics of technology interventions. The company has worked with many SIIA members, assisting them to work with school systems to evaluate their products and services.

• New Directions for Research Discussed at Institute of Education Sciences Conference

  June 9, 2009

  The Fourth Annual Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Research Conference was convened June 7 - 9 with an air of anticipation about new directions, as John Q. Easton began his term as director. Formerly executive director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, he brings a new perspective to IES. While Dr. Easton is quoted in Education Week as saying he will retain the rigor that IES has made a priority, the Consortium’s work points to the importance of building local capacity for research to support reform. In a paper published online, he and his colleagues provide a clear and detailed rationale for their approach that includes the need for combining high quality research with the ability to cut through technical details to communicate both good and bad news to local decision makers.

  Three Empirical Education staff members furthered this agenda of building capacity for local school and district evaluations in poster presentations at the conference. Dr. Robert Smith, the company’s vice president of engineering, outlined the company’s progress on MeasureResults™, a web-based evaluation solution for schools and districts. (Funding for the development of MeasureResults™ is from an IES Small Business Innovation Research grant.) Dr. Denis Newman, the company’s president, and Andrew P. Jaciw, director of experimental design and analysis, presented their findings on the process of developing low cost, timely, and locally relevant experiments (funded by an IES research grant). Development efforts on MeasureResults continue through the Empirical Education team’s application of the knowledge gained from this project entitled “Low Cost Experiments to Support Local School District Decisions.” This project guides the team in developing decision makers’ understanding of, and building local capacity for, conducting evaluation research.

• Empirical Education to Design a Multi-Year Evaluation of New GreatSchools Initiative

  May 13, 2009

  

  GreatSchools, a nonprofit provider of web-based resources for parents, has contracted with Empirical Education to design a multi-year evaluation of its initiative to empower parents to participate in their children's development and educational success.

  The initiative is funded by the Gates Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. Bill Jackson, Founder and President of GreatSchools, wrote in his blog: “More than a year ago, we began to consider: What more could we at GreatSchools do to improve education? How could we do more for our large audience of parents? And what could we do for low-income parents whose children face the steepest climb to college? Our answer: We should leverage the technology of our times to create a comprehensive parent-training program and support group that inspires and guides parents — especially low-income parents — to raise children who are ready for college.”

  Our evaluation will feature both formative and summative components and our planning will draw on experts from Public/Private Ventures, the Harvard Family Research Project, Stanford University, and the University of Arizona. During the evaluation’s initial year, our plan is to focus on understanding how families, community organizations, and school systems can leverage the web environment and resources being built as part of the initiative. On the basis of this theory of action, our team of researchers will operationalize the measurement of impact at the school, family, and student level, leveraging web technologies to conduct formative and summative experiments.

• Welcome On Board, John Easton!

  April 3, 2009

  

  The Obama administration has named John Q. Easton, executive director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, as the new director of the Institute of Education Sciences. The choice will bring a new perspective to IES. The Consortium provides research support for local reforms and improvements in the Chicago Public Schools. While Dr. Easton is quoted in Education Week as saying he will retain the rigor that IES has made a priority, the Consortium's work points to the importance of building local capacity for research to support reform. In a paper published online, Roderick, Easton, & Sebring (2009), he and his colleagues provide a clear and detailed rationale for their approach that includes the need for combining high quality research with the ability to cut through technical details to communicate both good and bad news to decision-makers. Empirical Education congratulates John Easton, and we look forward to working with him to replicate this model for research in school districts throughout the country.

  Consortium on Chicago School Research: A New Model for the Role of Research in Supporting Urban School Reform, 2/2009. Melissa Roderick, John Q. Easton, and Penny Bender Sebring.

• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

  April 1, 2009

  

  In response to the recent announcements of education stimulus funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Empirical Education is now offering assistance to state and local education agencies in building local capacity for rigorous evaluations. Our MeasureResults system helps state and district planners answer questions about the effectiveness of schools and of locally implemented programs. The enhanced analytic capabilities built into the MeasureResults system enables school districts to conduct their own rigorous research with findings relevant to their localized setting, using their existing datasets. Read more about how Empirical Education can work with state and local education agencies to take full advantage of ARRA funding. Also see how we partner with publishers to provide research packages along with their product offerings.

• Empirical Education Partners with NWEA to Research Virtual Control Groups

  March 9, 2009

  

  Northwest Evaluation Association, the leading provider of computer adaptive testing for schools, is partnering with Empirical Education to analyze the properties of its virtual control group (VCG) technologies. Empirical has already conducted a large number of randomized experiments in which NWEA’s “Measures of Academic Progress” (MAP) served both as pretest and posttest. The characteristics of a randomly assigned control group provide a yardstick in evaluating the characteristics of the VCG. The proposed research builds on extensive theoretical work on approaches to forming comparison groups for obtaining unbiased impact estimates from quasi-experiments.

  In parallel to this theoretical analysis, NWEA and Empirical Education are cooperating in a nationwide comparison group (“quasi-”) experiment to estimate the impact of a basal reading program in wide use nationally. Taking advantage of the fact that MAP is in use in thousands of schools, Empirical will identify a group of schools currently using this reading program and testing their students’ reading using MAP and then select a well matched comparison group from non-users who also test with MAP. Characteristics of the schools such as SES, percent English learner, urbanicity, ethnicity, and geographic region, as well as prior reading achievement, will be used in identifying the comparison group.

• Presentation at the Society for Research in Educational Effectiveness (SREE) Explores Methods for Studying Achievement Gaps

  March 1, 2009

  

  Frequently in Empirical Education’s experimental evaluations for school districts, the question of local concern is an achievement gap identified between two student groups. The analysis of these experiments also often finds significant differences between these subgroups in how effective the intervention was (that is, if it increased or decreased the gap) while not finding a significant overall difference. In his 2005 book, Howard Bloom suggested why there may be more statistical power to detect subgroup differences than to detect the average effect. The exploration presented at SREE, which was held in Washington March 1-3, examined the statistical characteristics of eight experiments conducted over the last three years to find out whether a critical assumption of Bloom’s approach held. His assumption is that the average performance gap does not vary across the units that are randomized. The work, led by Andrew P. Jaciw, Empirical Education’s Director of Experimental Design and Analysis, found that the assumption held. This finding is important because it suggests that local experiments focusing on achievement gaps may be less expensive than experiments addressing only the overall average effect of an intervention. (Click here for a copy of the poster and handout.)

  Bloom, H. S., (2005). Randomizing groups to evaluate place-based programs. In H. S. Bloom (Ed). Learning More From Social Experiments. New York, NY: Sage.

• Methods for Local Experimental Evaluation of STEM Initiatives Presented to State Legislators

  February 1, 2009

  

  The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) presented a seminar for education committee chairs January 9-11 in Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The topic was “Linking Research and Policy to Improve Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education.” Empirical Education‘s president, Denis Newman, presented the company‘s research on the Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative, an 80-school randomized experiment being conducted as part of its contract with the Regional Education Laboratory for the Southeast. The presentation also drew on findings from experiments the company has conducted to evaluate STEM initiatives elsewhere in the country to illustrate the importance of local research goals and characteristics in evaluation design. The seminar was part of a series on research funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. (Click here for a copy of the presentation.)

• New MeasureResults™ Webpage

  January 1, 2009

  

  Empirical Education clients and partners can now keep track of the latest MeasureResults developments on our new webpage: www.empiricaleducation.com/
  measureresults.php. The webpage features video clips that explain how MeasureResults’ online interface can be used to set up and conduct school level studies, as well as details about the design and development of program features. Updates and announcements will be posted on a regular basis. In addition to serving our existing MeasureResults subscribers, Empirical Education is currently developing a custom-designed MeasureResults tool for use in more than ten school districts for a high-school math effectiveness study. For more information about MeasureResults, refer to the new MeasureResults webpage.

• Empirical Education Focuses on Local Characteristics at the 14^th Annual CREATE Conference

  December 15, 2008

  

  Empirical Education staff presented at the National Evaluation Institute’s (NEI) 14^th annual CREATE conference in Wilmington, North Carolina. Both presentations focused on the local characteristics of the evaluations. Dr. Denis Newman, president of Empirical Education, and Jenna Zacamy, research manager, presented a randomized experiment which evaluated the impact of a pre-algebra curriculum (Carnegie Learning’s Cognitive Tutor Bridge to Algebra) being introduced in a pilot program in the Maui School District. The district adopted the program based in part on previous research showing substantial positive results in Oklahoma (Morgan & Ritter 2002). Given the unique locale and ethnic makeup in Maui, a local evaluation was warranted. District educators were concerned in particular with their less experienced teachers and with ethnic groups considered at risk. Unlike in prior research, we found no overall impact although for the algebraic operations subscale, low scoring students benefited from being in the Cognitive Tutor classes indicating that the new program could help to reduce the achievement gaps of concern. We also found for the overall math scale that uncertified teachers were more successful with their Cognitive Tutor classes than their conventional classes. Dr. Newman also presented work co-authored with Marco Muñoz and Andrew Jaciw on a quasi-experimental comparison, conducted by Empirical Education and Jefferson County (KY) schools, of an activity-based middle-school science program (Premier Science) to more traditional textbook programs. All the data were supplied by the district including a rating of quality of implementation. The primary pretest and outcome measures were tests of science and reading achievement. While there was no discernible difference overall, poor readers gained more from the non-textbook approach, helping to diminish an achievement gap of concern to the district.

• Reports Released on the Effect of Carnegie Learning’s Cognitive Tutor

  December 10, 2008

  

  The Maui School District has released results from a study of the effect of Carnegie Learning's Cognitive Tutor (CT) on long-term course selections and grade performance. Building upon two previous randomized experiments on the impact of CT on student achievement in Algebra I and Pre–algebra, the study followed the same groups of students in the year following their exposure to CT. The research did not find evidence of an impact of CT on either course selection or course grade performance for students in the following school year. The study also found no evidence that variation among ethnicities in both the difficulty of course taken and course grade received depended on exposure to CT.

  A concurrent study was conducted on the successes and challenges of program implementation with the teachers involved in the previous CT studies. The study took into account teachers’ levels of use and length of exposure to CT; the descriptive data comprised surveys, classroom observations, and interviews. The major challenges to implementation included a lack of access to resources, limited support for technology, and other technological difficulties. After 3 years of implementation, teachers reported that these initial barriers had been resolved; however teachers have yet to establish a fully collaborative classroom environment, as described in the Carnegie Learning implementation model.

  Maui School District is the company’s first MeasureResults subscriber. A similar research initiative is being conducted at the community college level with The Maui Educational Consortium. The report for this study will be announced later this year.

• Five Presentations Accepted for AERA 2009

  December 1, 2008

  

  Empirical Education will be heading to sunny San Diego next April! Once again, Empirical will have a strong showing at the 2009 American Educational Research Association conference, which will be held in downtown San Diego on April 13-17, 2009. Our presentations will span several divisions, including Learning & Instruction, Measurement & Research Methodology, and Research, Evaluation, & Assessment in Schools. Research topics will include:

  • Examining the Efficacy of a Sight-Word Reading Program for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities
  • Probing the Contents of the Black Box: Complementary Approaches to Answering the How of “What Works”
  • Estimating Program Impacts After the Control Group Joins Treatment: Comparing Extra- and Quasi-experimental Methods

  As a follow-up to our successful 2008 AERA New York reception at Henri Bendel’s Chocolate Room, Empirical Education plans to host another “meet and greet” at this year’s conference as well. Details about the reception will be announced on our website soon.

• Report Released on The Efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program — Level One

  November 1, 2008

  

  Empirical Education and PCI Publishing have released the results of a one-year randomized control trial on the efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program — Level 1 for students with moderate to severe disabilities. Conducted in the Brevard and Miami-Dade County school districts, the study found that, after one year, students in the PCI program had substantial success in learning sight words in comparison to students in the control group — equivalent to a 21 percentile point difference. Though researchers found that students’ grade level had no effect on achievement with the program, they found a small moderating effect of the phonological pre-assessment: students starting with greater phonological skills benefit more from PCI than students starting with lower scores. This report will be presented at the 2009 AERA conference in San Diego, CA. A four-year follow-on study is being conducted with a larger group of students in Florida.

• Final Report on “Local Experiments” Project

  October 1, 2008

  

  Empirical Education released the final report of a project that has developed a unique perspective on how school systems can use scientific evidence. Representing more than three years of research and development effort, our report describes the startup of six randomized experiments and traces how local agencies decided to undertake the studies and how the resulting information was used. The project was funded by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences under their program on Education Policy, Finance, and Systems. It started with a straightforward conjecture:
  The combination of readily available student data and the greater pressure on school systems to improve productivity through the use of scientific evidence of program effectiveness could lead to a reduction in the cost of rigorous program evaluations and to a rapid increase in the number of such studies conducted internally by school districts.

  The prevailing view of scientifically based research is that educators are consumers of research conducted by professionals. There is also a belief that rigorous research is extraordinarily expensive. The supposition behind our proposal was that the cost could be made low enough to allow experiments to be conducted routinely to support district decisions with local educators as the producers of evidence. The project contributed a number of methodological, analytic, and reporting approaches with potential to lower costs and make rigorous program evaluation more accessible to district researchers. An important result of the work was bringing to light the differences between conventional research design aimed at broadly generalized conclusions and design aimed at answering a local question, where sampling is restricted to the relevant “unit of decision making” such as a school district with jurisdiction over decisions about instructional or professional development programs. The final report concludes with an understanding of research use at the central office level, whether “data-driven” or “evidence-based” decision making, as a process of moving through stages in which looking for descriptive patterns in the data (i.e., data mining for questions of interest) will precede the use of statistical analysis of differences between and associations among variables of interest using appropriate methods such as HLM. And these will precede the adoption of an experimental research design to isolate causal, moderator, and mediator effects. It is proposed that most districts are not yet prepared to produce and use experimental evidence but would be able to start with useful descriptive exploration of data leading to needs assessment as a first step in a more proactive use of evaluation to inform their decisions.

  For a copy of the report, please contact reports@empiricaleducation.com or choose the Low Cost Experiments to Support Local School District Decisions report from the drop down menu of our reports request page.

• Maui Community College Hires Empirical Education for an Evaluation of NSF-Funded Project

  August 22, 2008

  

  In Hawaii, Ho’okahua means “to lay a foundation”. Focusing on Hawaiian students over multiple years, the Ho’okahua Project aims to increase the number of Maui Community College (MCC) students entering, persisting, and succeeding in college level science, mathematics, and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) degree programs. Several strategies have already been implemented, including a bridge program with the high schools from which the MCC student community is largely drawn.

  The Maui Educational Consortium provides leadership for this work and has been instrumental in a number of other initiatives for increasing the capacity to achieve their goals. For example, the implementation of Cognitive Tutor for Algebra 1 was the subject of a related Empirical Education randomized experiment. Another important capacity fostered by the Educational Consortium, working with the University of Hawai’i Office of the State Director for Career and Technical Education, is an initiative called HI-PASS, which aggregates student data across high school and community college. Initially in its evaluation, Empirical Education will be using information on math courses developed through the HI-PASS project to follow the success of students from the earlier study.