WWC Review of the Report &quot;Longitudinal Evaluation of a Scale-up Model for Teaching Mathematics with Trajectories and Technologies.&quot; What Works Clearinghouse Single Study Review
Author: What Works Clearinghouse (ED)
Date: 2014-07-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Mathematics Instruction,Intervention,Preschool Education,Kindergarten,Longitudinal Studies,Educational Research,Instructional Effectiveness,Computer Uses in Education,Mathematics Curriculum,Faculty Development,Preschool Teachers,Computer Software,Mathematics Achievement

The 2012 study, &quot;Longitudinal Evaluation of a Scale-Up Model for Teaching Mathematics with Trajectories and Technologies,&quot; examined the effects of &quot;Technology-enhanced, Research-based, Instruction, Assessment, and professional Development (TRIAD),&quot; a math intervention for preschoolers that combines a curriculum, a software-based teaching tool, and in-person teacher professional development. &quot;TRIAD&quot; is designed for young children, particularly those at risk of low math achievement. The study also included an assessment of whether continuing the intervention through kindergarten improved math achievement at the end of kindergarten. To measure these effects, two versions of the intervention were delivered: (a) &quot;TRIAD&quot; no follow-through (&quot;TRIAD-NFT&quot;), where children only received &quot;TRIAD&quot; in preschool; and (b) &quot;TRIAD&quot; follow-through (&quot;TRIAD-FT&quot;), where children received &quot;TRIAD&quot; in both preschool and kindergarten. Forty-two schools from Buffalo, NY, and Boston, MA were included in this study. Within each city, schools were grouped by the previous year's fourth grade mathematics state assessment scores and then randomly assigned to either the &quot;TRIAD-NFT&quot; group (14 schools), the &quot;TRIAD-FT&quot; group (12 schools), or a comparison group that implemented neither intervention (16 schools). From each preschool classroom, researchers randomly selected up to 15 children to participate. Researchers assessed the math ability of these children at the start of preschool (prior to intervention), at the end of preschool (after 1 year of study participation), and at the end of kindergarten (after 2 years of study participation). Using these completed assessments, 963 students were included in the final analysis. To measure the intervention's effects, the researchers separately compared outcomes at the end of kindergarten for those in &quot;TRIAD-NFT&quot; and &quot;TRIAD-FT&quot; to those from the comparison group. The researchers further compared the end-of-kindergarten outcomes between &quot;TRIAD-NFT&quot; and &quot;TRIAD-FT&quot; to assess whether there were any differences due to the continuity of the &quot;TRIAD&quot; intervention into kindergarten. At the end of kindergarten, the authors found that both the &quot;TRIAD-NFT&quot; and &quot;TRIAD-FT&quot; interventions had a statistically significant positive effect on student performance on the Research-based Elementary Math Assessment (REMA) when compared to students attending comparison schools, and the WWC confirmed these findings. The authors found no difference in REMA performance when comparing students attending &quot;TRIAD-NFT&quot; schools to those attending &quot;TRIAD-FT&quot; schools. The research described in this report meets WWC group design standards with reservations This study is a randomized controlled trial with unknown levels of study attrition, and thus, this study does not pass the attrition standard. However, the study demonstrates the equivalence of the analytic samples for each comparison at baseline. Appended are: (1) Study details; (2) Outcome measure for the mathematics achievement domain; and (3) Study findings for the mathematics achievement domain. A glossary of terms is also included. [The following study is the focus of this review: Sarama, J., Clements, D. H., Wolfe, C. B., &amp; Spitler, M. E. (2012). &quot;Longitudinal Evaluation of a Scale-Up Model for Teaching Mathematics with Trajectories and Technologies.&quot; &quot;Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness,&quot; 5(2), 105-135 (EJ961450).]