ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Preventing School Dropout with Secondary Students: The Implementation of an Individualized Reading Intervention and Dropout Prevention Intervention
Author: Roberts, Greg
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Dropouts,Secondary School Students,Dropout Prevention,Intervention,Individualized Reading,Reading Programs,Reading Achievement,Reading Improvement,Reading Instruction,Reading Comprehension,Reading Tests

Students transitioning from middle school to high school face a range of academic and social challenges. Academic content is more diverse and challenging, and its delivery is increasingly text based, requiring competence in literacy and problem-solving skill areas. Students entering 9th grade often struggle to find an appropriate peer group and may face challenges at home, hindering motivation and diminishing school engagement. The combined and interrelated challenges of poor achievement and low school engagement increase the likelihood of dropping out. This study addresses important educational problems by providing evidence to support the efficacy of implementing individualized reading instruction and a dropout prevention program separately and in conjunction in improving reading achievement and school engagement for secondary students most at risk for academic failure. The reading intervention Check and Connect (C&amp;C) was developed for struggling adolescents and originally field tested with funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. The dropout prevention intervention in this study used a modified version of Check and Connect. The two studies that comprise the evidence base for C&amp;C were conducted in the Minneapolis metropolitan area and targeted a specific population (primarily African American males receiving special education services), indicating a need for replication with other populations. The results from the first two years of the study are statistically significant in favor of the treatment group for the variables of high importance including students' perceptions of their school engagement and reading-related outcomes. Specifically, participants in the intensive reading interventions--with and without C&amp;C--significantly outperformed those in a randomized, untreated comparison on a standardized measure of reading comprehension, and students participating in the modified C&amp;C treatments--with and without reading--reported higher levels of school engagement over time compared to students in the untreated comparison. A table is appended.
The Impact of a Comparison Curriculum in Algebra I: A Randomized Experiment
Author: Star, Jon R.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Comparative Analysis,Algebra,Mathematics Education,Intervention,Standardized Tests,Control Groups,Pretests Posttests,Scores,Mathematics,Outcomes of Education,Mathematics Achievement,Mathematics Curriculum,Academic Achievement

Comparison is a powerful tool that has been shown to improve learning in a variety of domains. In both laboratory studies and small-scale classroom studies, having learners compare and contrast worked examples has been shown to reliably lead to gains in students' knowledge. Comparison is also integral to &quot;best practices&quot; in mathematics education. Having students share solution procedures for a particular problem and then discuss the similarities and differences in the different procedures lies at the core of reform pedagogy in many countries throughout the world. Researchers' past empirical work has illustrated the potential benefits of comparison for students' learning of mathematics. Students who were shown two worked examples side-by-side and given the opportunity to compare and discuss similarities and differences between problems, solutions, and strategies achieved greater gains in conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and flexibility, as compared to control students. The current intervention sought to build upon past research by scaling up materials to encourage comparison in the classroom throughout the academic year using a randomized control trial design. This report provides the results of a year-long experiment examining the impact of researcher-designed supplemental curriculum materials that &quot;infused&quot; comparison into the learning and teaching of Algebra I. The question guiding this research is as follows: What is the effect of the supplemental comparison curriculum on Algebra I students' knowledge? Data were collected from teachers and students in 57 public schools across the state of Massachusetts during the 2010-2011 school year. Suburban, urban, and rural schools were represented. Results suggest that, when implemented with sufficient dosage and instructional quality, use of the supplemental curriculum that &quot;infused&quot; comparison into the learning and teaching of Algebra I improved students' learning of mathematics. Future research will determine whether encouraging sufficient dosage and instructional quality of this supplemental curriculum in classrooms might lead to better student outcomes than business-as-usual classrooms. Tables and a figure are appended.
Prognostic Score-Based Difference-in-Differences Strategy for Multilevel Multi-Cohort Data
Author: Hong, Guanglei
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Accountability,Scores,Comparative Analysis,Algebra,Grade 9,Mathematics Achievement,Secondary School Mathematics,Experimental Groups,Academic Achievement,Statistical Analysis,Measurement,Bias,Prognostic Tests,Cohort Analysis

When using time series accountability data to evaluate system-wide education policies, concurrent changes often pose threats to internal validity. The standard difference-in-differences (DID) method resorts to a non-equivalent comparison group whose average outcome change is due to such confounding. This strategy relies on the strong assumption that the average confounding impact of concurrent events is the same for the comparison group unaffected by the policy and the experimental group affected by the policy. This assumption will be violated and therefore the DID results will be biased, for example, if the confounding effect varies by individual characteristics and if the experimental group and the comparison group differ in such characteristics. Prior research has typically employed a DID model with linear covariance adjustment for observed pretreatment characteristics. More recently, researchers have attempted to equate the covariate distribution of the comparison group with that of the experimental group through propensity score matching or weighting before conducting DID analyses. This study provides the theoretical rationale for the prognostic score-based DID strategy, clarifies its identification assumptions, and develops an analytic procedure. This study illustrates the new strategy with an evaluation of a policy adopted by the Chicago Public Schools requiring all ninth graders to take algebra, defines the causal estimand, and develops statistical models for investigating whether the policy effect was enhanced as its implementation became mature or whether the effect faded out over time as the reform lost its momentum after the initial period. The new strategy is then extended to multilevel multi-cohort education accountability data. This new strategy greatly reduces the dimensionality of covariates for adjustment, which is a major advantage over the linear covariance adjusted DID. The stratification procedure enables researchers to detect heterogeneity in the confounding effects of concurrent events as well as in the policy effect. Yet like most other DID methods, this new strategy shows limitations when the experimental group and the conditional group differ in the distribution of an unobservable and when the amount of confounding of concurrent events is a function of the unobservable. Appendices include a proof and information on obtaining an estimate of the policy effect on the untreated pre-policy students in the experimental school.
The Impacts of an Integrated Community Development Program in Southern Ethiopia--A Propensity Score Analysis
Author: Rui, Ning
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Community Development,Integrated Activities,Community Programs,Program Effectiveness,Community Benefits,Community Surveys,Intervention,Quasiexperimental Design,Family Characteristics,Agricultural Production,Immunization Programs,Literacy,Control Groups,Experimental Groups

With funding through grants and donations, an international development organization has provided developmental services to a woreda in southern Ethiopia since the early 1980s. This study is intended to assess the outcome and impact of the program and address the following questions: (1) Did direct beneficiaries of the CDTP program exhibit better program outcomes than indirect beneficiaries; if so, to what extent has participation in the CDTP program led to increased economic, health, and education related outcomes for sponsored households and youth? (2) What are the pathways through which program effects ripple from direct to indirect beneficiaries? The program team collected background information from a total of 4,075 residents. The most positive outcomes tend to center around the household agricultural and economic variables. This study revealed some basic social and educational problems of the community, which have important implications on program improvement in the developing world. Future research needs to address to how efforts and resources from governmental and non-governmental sources can be utilized effectively to meet the needs of the existing inhabitants and lead to purposive and sustainable improvement. Tables are appended.
Preliminary Findings from an Efficacy Study of a Distributed Leadership Model of School Organization
Author: Borman, Kathryn
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Leadership Styles,Participative Decision Making,Transformational Leadership,Models,Performance Factors,Teacher Behavior,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Intervention,Organizational Change,Instructional Innovation,Administrative Organization,Access to Information,Middle Schools,Data Analysis,Teacher Attitudes,Administrator Attitudes,Classroom Observation Techniques,Teacher Leadership

A widely cited meta-analysis of the effects of comprehensive school reform and student achievement (Borman, Hewes, Overman, and Brown, 2003) found Modern Red Schoolhouse-developed whole-school intervention programs to boost student achievement outcomes at rates on par with or higher than other comprehensive school reforms such as &quot;America's Choice and Success for All.&quot; The purpose of this Institute of Education Sciences Goal study (R305A090481) is: (1) to explore the relationships among the Systems Leadership for Middle Schools (SLMS) intervention and student achievement outcomes; and (2) to explore factors and conditions that mediate the relationships among the SLMS intervention and student achievement outcomes. These explorations will result in sets of hypotheses on the relationships between the SLMS intervention and (a) student achievement outcomes, (b) the factors and conditions that mediate the relationships between the intervention and student achievement outcomes, and (c), the SLMS intervention and changes in densities and extent of collegial ties. Tentatively, the authors conclude the SLMS intervention shows promise for boosting student achievement outcomes, despite the descriptive quantitative trends implying otherwise.
Rater Drift and Time Trends in Classroom Observations
Author: Casabianca, Jodi M.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Classroom Observation Techniques,Observation,Trend Analysis,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8,Mathematics,Mathematics Instruction,Middle School Teachers,Scores,Equations (Mathematics)

Classroom observation protocols, in which observers rate multiple dimensions of teaching according to established protocols (either live in the classroom, or post-hoc from lesson videos), are increasingly being used in both research and policy contexts. However, scores generated from these protocols have many sources of error. Day to day variation in classroom activities, and variation in curricula and context across different classrooms a teacher may teach mean that a small sample of lessons could vary widely on scores even when scored by a common rater. Variation among raters and changes in raters' use of rubric score scale over time also contribute to error. The purpose of this study is to use scores from video observations from multiple teaching observation protocols administered as part of the Understanding Teaching Quality (UTQ) study to investigate and understand the nature of rater variation due to rating severity, including overall time trends and variations among raters. The UTQ study included 458 teachers teaching mathematics (n=231) or English language arts (n=227) to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in middle schools in three large school systems from the same metropolitan region in the southeastern United States. UTQ collected data over two school years with roughly half of the teachers participating in each year. For each classroom, two lessons were video recorded and then scored using three observation protocols: Classroom Assessment Scoring System, Secondary, CLASS-S (Pianta, Hamre, Haynes, Mintz, &amp; LaParo, 2007) and Danielson's Framework for Teaching, FFT, (Danielson, 2007) and either the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations, PLATO (Grossman et al., 2010), for English language arts classes, or the Mathematical Quality of Instruction, MQI (Hill et al., 2008), for mathematics classes. The authors have not yet fit the augmented variance decomposition model to these data. They present preliminary findings based on the CLASS-S protocol scores. The descriptive analyses suggest time trends that vary by domain and by rater, suggesting that scoring time is consequential. Tables and figures are appended.
The Impact of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Program on Student Reading Achievement
Author: Cordray, David S.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Student Evaluation,Individualized Instruction,Computer Assisted Testing,Educational Assessment,Program Effectiveness,Outcomes of Education,Fidelity,Reading Achievement,Benchmarking,Elementary School Students,Grade 4,Grade 5,Research Design,Randomized Controlled Trials,Multiple Regression Analysis,Reading Tests

One of the most widely used commercially available systems incorporating benchmark assessment and training in differentiated instruction is the Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) program. The MAP program involves two components: (1) computer-adaptive assessments administered to students three to four times per year, and (2) teacher training and access to MAP resources on how to use data from these assessments to differentiate instruction. This report focuses on the program's impact after the second year of implementation, and seeks to answer the following questions on implementation fidelity and student outcomes: (1) Were MAP resources (training, consultation, web-based materials) delivered by NWEA and received and used by teachers as planned?; (2) Did MAP teachers apply differentiated instructional practices in their classes to a greater extent than their control counterparts?; (3) Did the MAP program (that is, training plus benchmark testing feedback) affect the reading achievement of grades 4 and 5 students after the second year of implementation, as measured by the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) reading scale scores or the MAP composite test scores in reading and language use?; and (4) Were there variations in the impacts of the MAP intervention on grades 4 or 5 ISAT reading and MAP composite scores across subgroups of students after the second year of implementation? The study focused on grade 4 and 5 students in 32 public elementary schools across five districts in Illinois. The differential impact among low and high ability students at grade 4 suggests that the MAP program may have the greatest impact on low and high ability students.
Summer Outreach with Near-Age Peer Mentors: A Randomized Experiment to Improve the Transition to College
Author: Schneider, Barbara
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Summer Programs,Outreach Programs,High School Graduates,Peer Teaching,Mentors,Intervention,College Bound Students,Randomized Controlled Trials,High School Seniors,Student Surveys,Grade 11,Grade 12,Urban Schools,Rural Schools,Academic Advising,Counseling,Student Financial Aid,Documentation,Student Records,Longitudinal Studies

Although students leave high school stating their plans to continue their education, some lack the information and strategies to successfully navigate a successful transition to college. This paper presents results from a randomized study that is part of a larger, quasi-experimental intervention, the College Ambition Program (CAP). The embedded study targeted graduating high school students to receive additional support through the use of near-age peer mentoring during the summer prior to beginning college. This study expects to contribute to existing theoretical and empirical research on the attrition trends for students expecting to continue on to college during the summer. Given that similar studies have found positive effects for this type of intervention during the summer, and taking advantage of the larger on-going intervention with multiple years of data on students in the CAP treatment schools, researchers examine what type of student is more likely to take advantage of this type of support over the summer. This study is best described as a pretest, posttest, experimental design. Graduating twelfth grade students at the eight high schools in the CAP study who had indicated their postsecondary plans were randomized into the treatment or control conditions. The three primary sources of data are: (1) a senior exit survey that was given to all graduating 12th grade students prior to the start of the randomized study; (2) mentor contact logs that were completed during the course of the intervention; and (3) postsecondary enrollment data provided by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). With respect to participation in the summer intervention, mentors reached out via email and phone to all students in the treatment group. The response rate of actually reaching the students in the treatment group was, on average, just over 50 percent. The study is ongoing at the time of this report. A table is appended.
Within-Cluster and Across-Cluster Matching with Observational Multilevel Data
Author: Kim, Jee-Seon
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Probability,Research Methodology,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Simulation,Models,Statistical Analysis,Measurement Techniques,Economics,Sampling,Multivariate Analysis

When randomized experiments cannot be conducted in practice, propensity score (PS) techniques for matching treated and control units are frequently used for estimating causal treatment effects from observational data. Despite the popularity of PS techniques, they are not yet well studied for matching multilevel data where selection into treatment takes place among level-one units within clusters. For instance, students self-select into treatment conditions within schools (or teachers or classrooms). The authors investigate two different strategies for matching level one units (students): (i) within-cluster matching where matches are only formed within clusters (schools) and (ii) across-cluster matching where treatment and control units may be matched also across clusters. Using a simulation study, the authors show that both matching strategies are able to produce consistent estimates of the average treatment effect. However, across-cluster matching requires stronger assumptions than within-cluster matching. They also demonstrate that a lack of overlap between treated and control units within clusters cannot directly be compensated by switching to a between-cluster matching strategy. Generation of simulated target populations and a table are appended.
Reconciling Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Full-Day Kindergarten
Author: Gibbs, Chloe
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Evidence,Kindergarten,Young Children,Achievement Gap,Quasiexperimental Design,Comparative Analysis,Outcomes of Education,Literacy,Pretests Posttests,School Schedules,Control Groups,Hispanic American Students,Outcome Measures,Ethnicity,Race

This paper addresses the question of how to interpret evidence on the impact of full-day kindergarten resulting from different study designs, and provides guidance on how this evidence taken in tandem may inform the design and implementation of full-day kindergarten policies. Incorporating both experimental and quasi-experimental estimates on program impact, the study capitalizes on student assignment policies that allocated oversubscribed full-day kindergarten slots based on random lotteries and fixed cut-points on kindergarten readiness assessments, testing the causal impact on students' literacy skills at the end of the kindergarten year. The study uses data from eight school districts across Indiana: five districts that employed lotteries to assign students to full- and half-day kindergarten settings, and three districts that assigned the most academically needy student--on the basis of a cutpoint on a kindergarten readiness pretest--to oversubscribed full-day kindergarten slots. The districts are diverse in geographic location, size, and student composition. The intervention was assignment to--and participation in--full-day kindergarten, but notably, the student assignment policies from which the research designs are established also affect student composition in the classroom. The two sub-studies included in this paper employ experimental and regression discontinuity designs respectively. Experimental findings suggest that students who are assigned to--and those who participate in-- kindergarten in a full-day setting outperform their peers in half-day settings (0.31 standard deviations) in the same schools. In particular, findings reveal that nonwhite, predominately Hispanic students benefit (0.52 standard deviations) from full-day kindergarten in comparison to their half-day kindergarten peers. These heterogeneous treatment effects have implications for narrowing or closing the achievement gap early in formal schooling, and in fact constitutes 117 percent of the control group's race/ethnicity gap. Results from the districts that employed fixed cut-points to assign the most academically needy students to full-day kindergarten is not consistent with the experimental estimates. A figure is appended.