Andrew Jaciw, Chief Scientist and Epidemiologist at Empirical Education, has 23 years of experience in the field of education: 6 as a practitioner and 17 as a researcher. He has led the design and analysis of 25 randomized experiments and multiple quasi-experiments involving SEAs and LEAs, including 6 trials carried out through ED’s Institute of Education Sciences grants. Jaciw is currently the PI on three ED-funded projects and a fourth project that is in the dissemination stage. The first two are evaluations of Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) under a subcontract with Atlanta Neighborhood Charter Schools (ANCS) as part of their Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant, as well as under a subcontract with Georgia State University (GSU) as part of their Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant. The third is an evaluation of Making Sense of SCIENCE (MSS) under an Investing in Innovation (i3) five-year validation grant in 66 schools across two geographic regions—Wisconsin and the Central Valley of California. The fourth is an RCT of Imagine Math in multiple school districts and states across the country, including Alabama, Alaska, and Delaware.
In the past, Jaciw was the principal researcher on a study for REL Southeast, in which he directed the design and analysis and co-authored the report of a state-wide, cluster-randomized trial involving 80 schools and around 700 teachers, assessing the efficacy of the Alabama Math Science Technology Initiative (AMSTI) over a three year period. His research interests include problems of generalizability, implementation fidelity, and use of mixed methods to unpack impact findings from experiments. These findings have been published and presented in over 90 locations, including journals such as Methodological Innovations, Evaluation Review, and Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. Stanford University awarded Jaciw an MS in Epidemiology and a PhD in Education, focused on identifying factors that lead to discrepancies between quasi-experiments and true experiments in the analysis of program impacts. Before his MS, Jaciw earned a BS in statistics and MA in math education at the University of Toronto and worked as a statistical analyst at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Ontario's Education Quality and Accountability Office.
