DOI: 10.3886/icpsr26282
title: Study of Instructional Improvement (SII)
title: Archival Version

description: To meet the growing need for high-quality research on whole-school approaches to instructional improvement, researchers at the University of Michigan School of Education, in cooperation with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), conducted a large-scale, mixed method, longitudinal Study of Instructional Improvement to investigate the design, implementation, and effects on student achievement of three of the most widely-adopted whole-school school reform programs in the United States: the Accelerated Schools (ASP), America's Choice (AC), and Success for All (SFA). Each of these school reform programs sought to make "comprehensive" changes in the instructional capacity of schools, and each was being implemented in schools in diverse social environments. Each program, however, also pursued a different design for instructional improvement, and each developed particular strategies for assisting schools in the change process. In order to better understand the process of whole-school reform, Study of Instructional Improvement (SII) developed a program of research to examine how these interventions operated and to investigate their impact on schools' instructional practice and student achievement in reading and mathematics. The research program had 3 components: a longitudinal survey of 115 schools (roughly 30 schools in each of the 3 interventions under study, plus 26 matched control schools), case studies of the 3 interventions under study, and detailed case studies of 9 schools implementing the interventions under study (plus 3 matched control schools). Across all components of the SII study, the research examined alternative designs for instructional improvement, alternative strategies for putting these designs into practice in local schools, and the extent to which alternative designs and support strategies promote substantial changes in instructional capacity and student achievement in reading and mathematics. The most comprehensive component of SII was a large-scale, longitudinal, multisurvey study of schools. The use of survey research methods was intended to track the course of schools' engagement in comprehensive approaches to instructional improvement and to investigate the conditions under which this led to substantive changes in instructional practices and student achievement in reading and mathematics. The study design called for each school to participate in the study for a period of three years, although some schools voluntarily provided a fourth year of teacher, leader, and school-level information (no additional student-level data). In addition, survey researchers conducted interviews, primarily a telephone protocol with a parent or guardian of each cohort student in order to gather information on students' family background and on students' home and community environments. Researchers also gathered data from school leaders and others about the policy environments in which the schools are located. Another component of the research program involved the development of detailed case studies of a small number schools participating in the study. The case studies gathered observational, interview, and documentary evidence to better understand how instructional change processes unfolded in different school settings. Case studies were conducted in 12 schools operating in differently configured state and district policy environments. In each environment, researchers selected schools participating in one of the interventions under study as well as a "matched" control school. Finally, case study data was used to chart key similarities and differences in the design and operations of the interventions under study, to analyze how different design features affect operating strategies, and to better understand the general problem of how intervention programs can work to devise and "bring to scale" a feasible scheme for improving instruction in local schools.
description: The main purposes were two-fold. First, to know the circumstances under which different intervention designs and strategies could be expected to produce changes in particular elements of instructional capacity in schools. Secondly, to know which elements of instructional capacity, when present in schools, worked to produce higher levels of student achievement in reading or mathematics.
description: Response Rates: Please see Appendix A of the ICPSR Codebook for response rates.
description: Sampling efforts yielded 115 schools located in 45 different school districts, in 15 states, and 17 metropolitan areas. Overall, 31 America's Choice (AC) schools, 30 Success for All (SFA) schools, 28 Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) schools, and 26 comparison schools. For more information please refer to the "Sample and Study Design" section of the ICPSR Codebook.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Cohort A -- Supera (Fall - 1st Grade) DS2: Cohort A -- Supera (Fall - 2nd Grade) DS3: Cohort A -- Supera (Spring - 1st Grade) DS4: Cohort A -- Supera (Spring - 2nd Grade) DS5: Cohort A -- Terra Nova (Fall - 1st Grade) DS6: Cohort A -- Terra Nova (Fall - 2nd Grade) DS7: Cohort A -- Terra Nova (Spring - 1st Grade) DS8: Cohort A -- Terra Nova (Spring - 2nd Grade) DS9: Cohort A -- Terra Nova (Spring - Kindergarten) DS10: Cohort A -- Woodcock-Johnson (Fall - Kindergarten) DS11: Cohort A LA Logs -- 1st Grade DS12: Cohort A LA Logs -- 2nd Grade DS13: Cohort A Math Logs -- 1st Grade DS14: Cohort A Math Logs -- 2nd Grade DS15: Cohort A Student Motivation Form -- 1st Grade DS16: Cohort A Student Motivation Form -- 2nd Grade DS17: Cohort A Student Motivation Form -- Kindergarten DS18: Cohort A Student Rating Form -- 1st Grade DS19: Cohort A Student Rating Form -- 2nd Grade DS20: Cohort A Student Rating Form -- Kindergarten DS21: Cohort A -- WJ-R Spanish (Fall - Kindergarten) DS22: Cohort B -- Supera (Fall - 3rd Grade) DS23: Cohort B -- Supera (Fall - 4th Grade) DS24: Cohort B -- Supera (Fall - 5th Grade) DS25: Cohort B -- Supera (Spring - 3rd Grade) DS26: Cohort B -- Supera (Spring - 4th Grade) DS27: Cohort B -- Supera (Spring - 5th Grade) DS28: Cohort B -- Terra Nova (Fall - 3rd Grade) DS29: Cohort B -- Terra Nova (Fall - 4th Grade) DS30: Cohort B -- Terra Nova (Fall - 5th Grade) DS31: Cohort B -- Terra Nova (Spring - 3rd Grade) DS32: Cohort B -- Terra Nova (Spring - 4th Grade) DS33: Cohort B -- Terra Nova (Spring - 5th Grade) DS34: Cohort B LA Logs - 3rd Grade DS35: Cohort B LA Logs - 4th Grade DS36: Cohort B LA Logs - 5th Grade DS37: Cohort B Math Logs - 3rd Grade DS38: Cohort B Math Logs - 4th Grade DS39: Cohort B Math Logs - 5th Grade DS40: Cohort B Student Motivation Form - 3rd Grade DS41: Cohort B Student Motivation Form - 4th Grade DS42: Cohort B Student Motivation Form - 5th Grade DS43: Cohort B Student Rating Form - 3rd Grade DS44: Cohort B Student Rating Form - 4th Grade DS45: Cohort B Student Rating Form - 5th Grade DS46: Parent Questionnaire - Family and SES DS47: School Characteristics Inventory 2000-2001 DS48: School Characteristics Inventory 2001-2002 DS49: School Characteristics Inventory 2002-2003 DS50: School Characteristics Inventory 2003-2004 DS51: School Leader Questionnaire 2000-2001 DS52: School Leader Questionnaire 2001-2002 DS53: School Leader Questionnaire 2002-2003 DS54: School Leader Questionnaire 2003-2004 DS55: Selected CCD variables 2000-2003 DS56: SII School Composite File (CCD, QED, Census Tract) DS57: Teacher Questionnaire 2000-2001 DS58: Teacher Questionnaire 2001-2002 DS59: Teacher Questionnaire 2002-2003 DS60: Teacher Questionnaire 2003-2004
description: All United States public elementary schools that began their affiliation with ASP, AC or SFA in the 1998-1999, 1999-2000, or 2000-2001 school years.
description: face-to-face interview; self-enumerated questionnaire; telephone interviewSII is described as a four-year study, but a "phased" or staggered collection design is utilized, where two separate student cohorts (Kindergarten through second grade and third grade through fifth grade) are followed longitudinally over three-year periods. Cohort A is designated as Kindergarten through second grade and Cohort B is designated as third grade through fifth grade.Although SII was designed as a quasi-experiment with three "treatment" groups and a matched control group, after the SII sample was constructed, subsamples of treatment and comparison schools were not perfectly matched. For this reason, it is recommended that statistical analyses oriented to establishing the effects of "treatment" participation on outcomes using "control" schools as the counterfactual be conducted using some form of propensity score matching.To relieve the potential misalignment of files, the SII files have been merged to logically reflect chronological participation of students across a three-year period. This pertains to the assessment data, teacher log files, the Student Rating Form, and Student Motivation Form. However, each of these files contains a variable flag named "year" to indicate the exact school calendar year in which data were collected.In order to construct a composite socioeconomic status (SES) measure, SII replicated the procedures commonly used in the development of education databases sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics. It is important to note, however, that the SES measure developed by SII is not norm-referenced to a national school population. Instead, a standardized coefficient of SES represents a student's status compared only to other students in the SII population.Although most sections of the Teacher Questionnaire (TQ) and School Leader Questionnaire (SLQ) are longitudinally designed and contain precisely the same items year-to-year, the data producer made some minor adjustments to the SLQ between survey administrations, and the PCK items for the TQ were changed during each administration to develop the battery of items necessary for scaling work. Variable positions (and variable names) changed year-to-year to accomodate these unavoidable shifts. Please see Appendix B and Appendix C for a variable cross-reference list for the TQ and SLQ, respectively.Due to Stata limitations, variables with characters for values will not have labels, however these labels are available in the SPSS and Stata setup files and in the ICPSR codebook.For part 1 through part 60, various date and time variables have been converted to string. The 'MISSING' codes for these variables display as "59:59" or "09/09/9999", and the code for 'DON'T KNOW' displays as "08/08/8888". Please see the "Processing Notes" section of the ICPSR codebook for more information.For part 1 through part 46, the variable "BRTHDATE" has been blanked to protect respondent confidentiality.For further information regarding this study please refer to the SII Web site.