News from 2010
- Empirical Education Partners with Carnegie Learning on New Student Performance...
- Empirical Education Develops Web-Based Tool to Improve Teacher Evaluation
- Empirical Education at AERA 2011
- New Education Pilot Brings Apple’s iPad Into the Classroom
- Empirical Education is Part of Winning i3 Team
- REL West Releases Report of RCT on Problem-Based Economics Conducted with...
- AERA 2010 Recap
- Software Industry Sets High Standards for Product Evaluation Research
- Report Released on Phase Two of The Efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program
- Conference Season has Arrived
- MeasureResults® to be Launched at CoSN 2010
- Poway Completes Study from MeasureResults Pilot
- Empirical Education Appoints Chief Scientist
- Webinar: Uncovering ARRA’s Research Requirements
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Empirical Education Partners with Carnegie Learning on New Student Performance Guarantee
November 30, 2010
Schools looking to improve student Algebra and Geometry achievement have signed up for a guarantee from Carnegie Learning® that states that students using the company’s Cognitive Tutor programs will pass their math courses. Empirical Education is tasked to monitor student performance in participating schools. Starting this school year, Carnegie Learning guarantees that students who take three complete and consecutive years of Carnegie Learning’s math courses will pass their math class in the third year. The guarantee applies to middle and high school students taking the Carnegie Learning Bridge to Algebra, Algebra, Algebra II, and Geometry courses.
In the coming weeks/months, Empirical will collect roster data, course grades, and assessment scores from schools as well as usage data from Carnegie Learning’s math teaching software. These data will be combined to generate biannual reports that will provide schools with evidence they can use to effectively improve implementation of the courses and raise student achievement.
Carnegie Learning’s guarantee is part of their School Improvement Grant support efforts. “Partnering with Empirical Education will allow us to get mid- and end-of-year research reports into the hands of our school partners,” says Steve Ritter, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Carnegie Learning. “It’s part of our continuous improvement cycle; we’re excited to see the progress districts committed to the turnaround and transformation process can make with these new, powerful tools.”
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Empirical Education Develops Web-Based Tool to Improve Teacher Evaluation
November 17, 2010
For school districts looking for ways to improve teacher observation methods, Empirical Education has begun development of a web-delivered tool that will provide a convenient way to validate their observational protocols and rubrics against measures of the teacher’s contribution to student academic growth.
Empirical Education is charged with developing a “validation engine” as part of the Measures of Teacher Effectiveness (MET) project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As described on the project’s website, the tool will allow users to “view classroom observation videos, rate those videos and then receive a report that evaluates the predictive validity and rater consistency for the protocol.” The MET project has collected thousands of hours of video of classrooms as well as records of the characteristics and academic performance associated with the students in the class.
By watching and coding videos of a range of teachers, users will be able to verify whether or not their current teacher rating systems are identifying teaching behavior associated with higher achievement. The tool will allow users to review their own rating systems against a variety of MET project measures, and will give real-time feedback through an automated report generator.
Development of the validation engine builds on two years of MET Project research, which included data from six school districts across the country and over 3,000 teachers. Researchers will now use the data to identify leading indicators of teacher practice on student achievement. The engine is expected to undergo beta testing over the next few months, beginning with the National Math and Science Initiative.
Announcement of the new tool comes as interest in alternative ways to measure the effectiveness of teachers is becoming a major issue in education and as federal, state and local officials and teacher organizations look for researched-based ways to identify effective teachers and improve student outcomes.
“At a time when schools are experiencing budget cuts, it is vital that school districts have ready access to research tools, so that they can make the most informed decisions,” says Denis Newman, President of Empirical Education. The validation engine will be part of a suite of web-based technology tools developed by the company, including MeasureResults®, an online tool that allows districts to evaluate the effectiveness of the products and programs they use.
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Empirical Education at AERA 2011
November 15, 2010
Empirical is excited to announce that we will again have a strong showing at the 2011 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference. Join us in festive New Orleans, LA, April 8-12 for the final results on the efficacy of the PCI Reading Program, our findings from the first year of formative research on our MeasureResults program evaluation tool, and more. Visit our website in the coming months to view our AERA presentation schedule and details about our annual reception—we hope to see you there!
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New Education Pilot Brings Apple’s iPad Into the Classroom
September 8, 2010
Above: Empirical Education President Denis Newman converses with Secretary Bonnie Reiss and author, Dr. Edward Burger
They’re not contest winners, but today, dozens of lucky 8th grade Algebra 1 students enthusiastically received new iPad devices, as part of a pilot of the new technology.
California Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss joined local officials, publishers, and researchers at Washington Middle School in Long Beach for the kick-off. Built around this pilot is a scientific study designed to test the effectiveness of a new iPad-delivered Algebra textbook. Over the course of the new school year, Empirical Education researchers will compare the effect of the interactive iPad-delivered textbook to that of its conventional paper counterpart.
The new Algebra I iPad Application is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and features interactive lessons, videos, quizzes, problem solving, and more. While students have to flip pages in a traditional textbook to reveal answers and explanations, students using the iPad version will be able to view interactive explanations and study guides instantly by tapping on the screen. Researchers will be able to study data collected from usage logs to enhance their understanding of usage patterns.
Empirical Education is charged with conducting the study, which will incorporate the performance of over twelve hundred students from four school districts throughout California, including Long Beach, San Francisco, Riverside, and Fresno. Researchers will combine measures of math achievement and program implementation to estimate the new program’s advantage while accounting for the effects of teacher differences and other influences on implementation and student achievement. Each participating teacher has one randomly selected class using the iPads while the other classes continue with the text version of the same material.
Though the researchers haven’t come up with a way of dealing with jealousy from students who will not receive an iPad, they did come up with a fair way to choose the groups who would use the new high tech program. Classes who received iPads were determined by a random number generator.
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Empirical Education is Part of Winning i3 Team
August 16, 2010
Of the almost 1700 grant applications submitted to the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) fund, the U.S. Department of Education chose only 49 proposals for this round of funding. A proposal submitted by our colleagues at WestEd was the third highest rated. Empirical Education assisted in developing the evaluation plan for the project. The project (officially named “Scaling Up Content-Area Academic Literacy in High School English Language Arts, Science and History Classes for High Needs Students”) is based on the Reading Apprenticeship model of academic literacy instruction. The grant will span five years and total $22.6 million, including 20 percent in matching funds from the private sector. This collaborative effort is expected to include 2,800 teachers and more than 400,000 students in 300 schools across four states. The evaluation component, on which we will collaborate with researchers from Academy for Educational Development, will combine a large scale randomized control trial with extensive formative research for continuous improvement of the innovation as it scales up.
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REL West Releases Report of RCT on Problem-Based Economics Conducted with Empirical Ed Help
July 30, 2010
Three years ago, Empirical Education began assisting the Regional Educational Laboratory West (REL West) housed at WestEd in conducting a large-scale randomized experiment on the effectiveness of the Problem-Based Economics (PBE) curriculum.
Today, the Institute of Education Sciences released the final report indicating a significant impact of the program for students in 12th grade as measured by the Test of Economic Literacy. In addition to the primary focus on student achievement outcomes, the study examined changes in teachers’ content knowledge in economics, their pedagogical practices, and satisfaction with the curriculum. The report, Effects of Problem Based Economics on High School Economics Instruction is found on the IES website.
Eighty Arizona and California school districts participated in the study, which encompassed 84 teachers and over 8,000 students. Empirical Education was responsible for major aspects of research operations, which involved collecting, tracking, scoring, and warehousing all data including rosters and student records from the districts, as well as the distribution of the PBE curricular materials, assessments, and student and teacher surveys. To handle the high volume and multiple administrations of surveys and assessments, we created a detail-oriented operation including schedules for following up with survey responses where we achieved response rates of over 95% for both teacher and student surveys. The experienced team of research managers, RAs and data warehouse engineers maintained a rigorous 3-day turnaround for gathering end-of-unit exams and sending score reports to each teacher. The complete, documented dataset was delivered to the researchers at WestEd as our contribution to this REL West achievement.
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AERA 2010 Recap
May 20, 2010
Empirical Education had a strong showing at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference this year in Denver, Colorado. Copies of our poster and paper presentations are available for download by clicking the links below. We also enjoyed seeing so many of you at our reception at Cru Wine Bar. View the picture collage from our event!
Formative and Summative Evaluations of Math Interventions, Paper Discussion
Division: Division H - Research, Evaluation and Assessment in Schools
Section 2: Program Evaluation in School Settings
Chair: Dale Whittington (Shaker Heights City School District)
Measuring the Impact of a Math Program as It Is Rolled Out Over Several YearsReading, Written Expression, and Language Arts, Poster Session
Division: Division C - Learning and Instruction
Section 1: Reading, Writing, and Language Arts
Examining the Efficacy of a Sight-Word Reading Program for Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities: Phase 2Statistical Theory and Quantitative Methods, Poster Session
Division: Division D - Measurement and Research Methodology
Section 2: Quantitative Methods and Statistical Theory
Matched Pairs, ICCs, and R-Squared: Lessons From Several Effectiveness Trials in EducationFormative Evaluations of Educational Programs, Poster Session
Division: Division H - Research, Evaluation and Assessment in Schools
Section 2: Program Evaluation in School Settings
Addressing Challenges of Within-School Randomization -
Software Industry Sets High Standards for Product Evaluation Research
May 13, 2010
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) announced the release of their new report, “Conducting and Reporting Product Evaluation Research: Guidelines and Considerations for Educational Technology Publishers and Developers.” Authored by our very own Dr. Denis Newman under the direction of the SIIA Education Division’s Research & Evaluation Working Group, the guidelines provide practical considerations and share best practices of product evaluation design, conduct, and reporting. Written primarily for publishers and developers of education technology, the guidelines reflect the high standards necessary to carry out rigorous, unbiased effectiveness research. Reviewers of the guidelines included Larry Hedges with Northwestern University, Robert Slavin with Johns Hopkins University, and Talbot Bielefeldt with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). A delegation of software publishers presented the Guidelines May 17 at the US Department of Education to John Q. Easton (Director of IES) and Karen Cator (Director of the Office of Education Technology). The document is now available to the public at the link above.
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Report Released on Phase Two of The Efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program
April 14, 2010
The results are in for Phase Two of a five year longitudinal efficacy trial of PCI’s Reading Program for students with moderate to severe disabilities. This research builds upon an initial randomized control trial conducted last year that found that students in the PCI program had substantial success in learning sight words in comparison to students in the control group. Phase Two continues research in the Brevard and Miami–Dade County school districts with teachers of supported-level students in grades 3-8. Using both quasi-experimental and extra-experimental methods, findings again demonstrate that students who received PCI for two years achieved significantly higher scores on the sight word assessment than students who were not exposed to the program. However, student progress through the program was slower than initially expected by the developers. Empirical will continue to collect, integrate, and analyze outcomes for three more years.
The methodological designs for this study were presented at this year’s annual SREE conference in Washington, D.C. Results for this study will also be presented at the 2010 Annual AERA Meeting in Denver, CO. Meet the research team as they describe the study in further detail during the Division C poster session on May 3.
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Conference Season has Arrived
March 12, 2010
Springtime marks the start of “conference season.” and Empirical Education has been busy attending and preparing for the various meetings and events. We are participating in five conferences (CoSN, SIIA, SREE, NCES-MIS, and AERA) and we hope to see some familiar faces in our travels. If you will be attending any of the following meetings, please give us a call—we’d love to schedule a time to speak with you.
CoSN
The Empirical team headed to the 2010 Consortium of School Networking conference in Washington, DC at the Omni Shoreham Hotel from February 28—March 3, 2010. We were joined by Eric Lehew, Executive Director of Learning Support Services at Poway Unified School District, who co-presented with us a poster titled, “Turning Existing Data into Research” (Monday, March 1 from 1:00pm to 2:00pm). As exhibitors, Empirical Education also hosted a 15-minute vendor demonstration entitled Building Local Capacity: Using Your Own Data Systems to Easily Measure Program Effectiveness, to launch our MeasureResults tool. Please contact us if you’d like to schedule a short webinar-style demo to take a tour of our web-based system.
SIIA
The Software & Information Industry Association held their 2010 Ed Tech Government Forum in Washington, DC on March 3–4. The focus this year was on Education Funding & Programs in a (Post) Stimulus Worldand included speakers, such as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan and West Virginia Superintendent of Schools, Steven Paine. Check out their website for the program highlights and schedule.
SREE
Just as the SIIA Forum came to a close, the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness held their annual conference—Research Into Practice—March 4-6 where our chief scientist, Andrew Jaciw, and research scientist, Xiaohui Zheng, presented their poster on estimating long-term program impacts when the control group joins treatment in the short-term. Dr. Jaciw was also named on a paper presentation with Rob Olsen of Abt Associates.
- Thursday March 4, 2010
3:30pm–5:00pm: Session 2
2E. Research Methodology
Examining State Assessments
Forum
Chair: Jane Hannaway, The Urban Institute
Using State Or Study-Administered Achievement Tests in Impact Evaluations
Rob Olsen and Fatih Unlu, Abt Associates and Andrew Jaciw, Empirical Education
View abstract - Friday March 5, 2010
5:00pm–7:00pm: Poster Session
Poster Session: Research Methodology
Estimating Long-Term Program Impacts When the Control Group Joins Treatment in the Short-Term: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of the Tradeoffs Between Extra- and Quasi-Experimental Estimates
Andrew Jaciw, Boya Ma, and Qingfeng Zhao, Empirical Education
View abstract
NCES-MIS
The 23rd Annual Management Information Systems (MIS) Conference was held in Phoenix, Arizona March 3-5. Co-sponsored by the Arizona Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the MIS Conference brings together the people who work with information collection, management, transmittal, and reporting in school districts and state education agencies. The majority of the sessions focused on data use, data standards, statewide data systems, and data quality. For more information, refer to the program highlights.
AERA
We will have a strong showing at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado from Friday, April 30 through Tuesday, May 4. Please come talk to us at our poster and paper sessions. View our AERA presentation schedule to find out which of our presentations you would like to attend. And we hope to see you at our customary stylish reception Sunday evening, May 2 from 6 to 8:30—mark your calendars!
- Thursday March 4, 2010
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MeasureResults® to be Launched at CoSN 2010
February 23, 2010
Empirical Education will launch its web-based educational research solution, MeasureResults on March 1 at the Consortium for School Networking conference in Washington, DC. MeasureResults is a suite of online tools that makes rigorous research designs and statistical processes accessible to school systems and educational publishers who want to evaluate the effectiveness of products and services aimed at improving student performance.
“MeasureResults will change the way that school districts and product developers conduct rigorous evaluations,” said Denis Newman, Empirical Education President. “Instead of hiring outside evaluators or onsite research experts or statisticians, MeasureResults allows school district personnel to design a study, collect data, and review reports in our user-friendly online platform.”
MeasureResults grew out of a federally funded research project to develop a low-cost method for schools to conduct their own research. The product was developed for commercial distribution under a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the U.S. Department of Education. By moving the educational research processes online, MeasureResults makes school-run evaluations more efficient and less expensive.
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Poway Completes Study from MeasureResults Pilot
February 12, 2010
The results are in for Poway Unified School District’s first research study using our MeasureResults online tool. PUSD was interested in measuring the impact of CompassLearning’s Odyssey Reading program in the middle grades. Using an “interrupted time series” design with a comparison group, they found that both 7th and 8th grade students averaged 1 to 2 points higher than expected on the NWEA MAP Literacy assessment. PUSD plans to continue their evaluation of CompassLearning Odyssey in different subject areas and grade levels. Join us in D.C. at this year’s CoSN conference on March 1, 2010 as Eric Lehew, Executive Director of Learning Support Services at PUSD, presents findings and reflections on the process of using MeasureResults to conduct research at the local district level.
Click here to request a copy of the PUSD achievement report.
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Empirical Education Appoints Chief Scientist
February 5, 2010
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Jaciw, Ph.D. as Empirical Education’s Chief Scientist. Since joining the company more than five years ago, Dr. Jaciw has guided and shaped our analytical and research design practices, infusing our experimental methodologies with the intellectual traditions of both Cronbach and Campbell. As Chief Scientist, he will continue to lead Empirical’s team of scientists setting direction for our MeasureResults evaluation and analysis processes, as well as basic research into widely applicable methodologies. Andrew received his Ph.D in Education from Stanford University.
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Webinar: Uncovering ARRA’s Research Requirements
January 22, 2010
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 9 webinar entitled, “Meet Stimulus Funds’ Research Requirements with Confidence.“ The webinar gave specific examples of how states may start planning their applications and 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. A follow-up webinar was broadcasted on January 20, 2010; it outlined a specific example of a program evaluation design that districts can use with existing data. The slides and presentation of the latest broadcast can both be accessed here. Stay tuned for future webinar topics on more alternative experimental research designs.