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SIIA ETIN EIS Conference Presentations 2017

We are playing a major role in the Education Impact Symposium (EIS), organized by the Education Technology Industry Network (ETIN), a division of The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

1. ETIN is releasing a set of edtech research guidelines that CEO Denis Newman wrote this year
2. Denis is speaking on 2 panels this year

The edtech research guidelines that Denis authored and ETIN is releasing on Tuesday, July 25 are called “Guidelines for Conducting and Reporting EdTech Impact Research in U.S. K-12 Schools” and can be downloaded from this webpage. The Guidelines are a much-needed response to a rapidly-changing environment of cloud-based technology and important policy changes brought about by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

The panels Denis will be presenting on are both on Tuesday, July 25, 2017.

12:30 - 1:15pm
ETIN’s New Guidelines for Product Research in the ESSA Era
With the recent release of ETIN’s updated Guidelines for EdTech Impact Research, developers and publishers can ride the wave of change from NCLB’s sluggish concept of “scientifically-based” to ESSA’s dynamic view of “evidence” for continuous improvement. The Guidelines are being made publicly available at the Symposium, with a discussion and Q&A led by the lead author and some of the contributing reviewers.
Moderator:
Myron Cizdyn, Chief Executive Officer, The BLPS Group
Panelists:
Malvika Bhagwat, Research & Efficacy, Newsela
Amar Kumar, Sr. Vice President, Pearson
Denis Newman, CEO, Empirical Education Inc.
John Richards, President, Consulting Services for Education

2:30 - 3:30pm
The Many Faces of Impact
Key stakeholders in the EdTech Community will each review in Ted Talk style, what they are doing to increase impact of digital products, programs and services. Our line-up of presenters include:
- K-12 and HE content providers using impact data to better understand their customers improve their products, and support their marketing and sales teams
- an investor seeking impact on both disadvantaged populations and their financial return in order to make funding decisions for portfolio companies
- an education organization helping institutions decide what research is useful to them and how to grapple with new ESSA requirements
- a researcher working with product developers to produce evidence of the impact of their digital products

After the set of presenters have finished, we’ll have time for your questions on these multidimensional aspects of IMPACT and how technology can help.
Moderator:
Karen Billings, Principal, BillingsConnects
Panelists:
Jennifer Carolan, General Partner, Reach Capital
Christopher Cummings, VP, Institutional Product and Solution Design, Cengage
Melissa Greene, Director, Strategic Partnerships, SETDA
Denis Newman, CEO, Empirical Education Inc.
Kari Stubbs, PhD, Vice President, Learning & Innovation, BrainPOP

If you get a chance to check out the Guidelines before EIS, Denis would love to hear your thoughts about them at the conference.

Determining the Impact of MSS on Science Achievement

Empirical Education is conducting an evaluation of Making Sense of SCIENCE (MSS) under an Investing in Innovation (i3) five-year validation grant awarded in 2014. MSS is a teacher professional learning approach that focuses on science understanding, classroom practice, literacy support, and pedagogical reasoning. The primary purpose of the evaluation is to assess the impact of MSS on teachers’ science content knowledge and student science achievement and attitudes toward science. The evaluation takes place in 66 schools across two geographic regions—Wisconsin and the Central Valley of California. Participating Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) include: Milwaukee Public Schools (WI), Racine Unified School District (WI), Lodi Unified School District (CA), Manteca Unified School District (CA), Turlock Unified School District (CA), Stockton Unified School District (CA), Sylvan Unified School District (CA), and the San Joaquin County Office of Education (CA).

Using a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) design, in 2015-16, we randomly assigned the schools (32 in Wisconsin and 34 in California) to receive the MSS intervention or continue with business-as-usual district professional learning and science instruction. Professional learning activities and program implementation take place during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years, with delayed treatment for the schools randomized to control, planned for 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Confirmatory impacts on student achievement and teacher content knowledge will be assessed in 2018. Confirmatory research questions include:

What is the impact of MSS at the school-level, after two years of full implementation, on science achievement in Earth and physical science among 4th and 5th grade students in intervention schools, compared to 4th and 5th grade students in control schools receiving the business-as-usual science instruction?


What is the impact of MSS on science achievement among low-achieving students in intervention elementary schools with two years of exposure to MSS (in grades 4-5) compared to low-achieving students in control elementary schools with business-as-usual instruction for two years (in grades 4-5)?

What is the impact of MSS on teachers’ science content knowledge in Earth and physical science compared to teachers in the business-as-usual control schools, after two full years of implementation in schools?

Additional exploratory analyses are currently being conducted and will continue through 2018. Exploratory research questions examine the impact of MSS on students’ ability to communicate science ideas in writing, as well as non-academic outcomes, such as confidence and engagement in learning science. We will also explore several teacher-level outcomes, including teachers’ pedagogical science content knowledge, and changes in classroom instructional practices. The evaluation also includes measures of fidelity of implementation.

We plan to publish the final results of this study in fall of 2019. Please check back to read the research summary and report.

Determining the Impact of CREATE on Math and ELA Achievement

Empirical Education is conducting the evaluation of Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) under an Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant awarded in 2014. The CREATE evaluation takes place in schools throughout the state of Georgia.

Approximately 40 residents from the Georgia State University (GSU) College of Education (COE) are participating in the CREATE teacher residency program. Using a quasi-experimental design, outcomes for these teachers and their students will be compared to those from a matched comparison group of close to 100 teachers who simultaneously enrolled in GSU COE but did not participate in CREATE. Implementation for cohort 1 started in 2015, and cohort 2 started in 2016. Confirmatory outcomes will be assessed in years 2 and 3 of both cohorts (2017 - 2019).

Confirmatory research questions we will be answering include:

What is the impact of one-year of exposure of students to a novice teacher in their second year of teacher residency in the CREATE program, compared to the Business as Usual GSU teacher credential program, on mathematics and ELA achievement of students in grades 4-8, as measured by the Georgia Milestones Assessment System?

What is the impact of CREATE on the quality of instructional strategies used by teachers, as measured by the Teacher Assessment of Performance Standards (TAPS) scores, at the end of the third year of residency, relative to the business as usual condition?

What is the impact of CREATE on the quality of the learning environment created by teachers, as measured by Teacher Assessment of Performance Standards (TAPS) scores, at the end of the third year of residency, relative to the business as usual condition?

Exploratory research questions will address additional teacher-level outcomes including retention, effectiveness, satisfaction, collaboration, and levels of stress in relationships with students and colleagues.

We plan to publish the results of this study in fall of 2019. Please visit the CREATE webpage to read the research report.

Academic Researchers Struggle with Research that is Too Expensive and Takes Too Long

I was in DC for an interesting meeting a couple weeks ago. The “EdTech Efficacy Research Academic Symposium” was very much an academic symposium.

The Jefferson Education Accelerator—out of the University of Virginia school of education—and Digital Promise—an organization that invents ways for school districts to make interesting use of edtech products and concepts—sponsored the get together. About 32% of the approximately 260 invited attendees were from universities or research organizations that conduct academic style research. About 16% represented funding or investment organizations and agencies, and another 20% were from companies that produce edtech (often being funded by the funders). 6% were school practitioners and, as would be expected at a DC event, about 26% were from associations and the media.

I represented a research organization with a lot of experience evaluating commercial edtech products. While in the midst of writing research guidelines for the software industry, i.e., the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), I felt a bit like an anthropologist among the predominantly academic crowd. I was listening to the language and trying to discern thinking patterns of professors and researchers, both federally- and foundation-funded. A fundamental belief is that real efficacy research is expensive (in the millions of dollars) and slow (a minimum of several years for a research report). A few voices said the cost could be lowered, especially for a school-district-initiated pilot, but the going rate—according to discussions at the meeting—for a simple study starts at $250,000. Given a recent estimate of 4,000 edtech products, (and assuming that new products and versions of existing products are being released at an accelerating rate), the annual cost of evaluating all edtech products would be around $1 billion—an amount unlikely to be supported in the current school funding climate.

Does efficacy research need to be that expensive and slow given the widespread data collection by schools, widely available datasets, and powerful computing capabilities? Academic research is expensive for several reasons. There is little incentive for research providers to lower costs. Federal agencies offer large contracts to attract the large research organizations with experience and high overhead rates. Other funders are willing to pay top dollar for the prestige of such organizations. University grant writers aim to support a whole scientific research program and need to support grad students and generally conduct unique studies that will be attractive to journals. In conventional practice, each study is a custom product. Automating repeatable processes is not part of the culture. Actually, there is an odd culture clash between the academic researchers and the edtech companies needing their services.

Empirical Education is now working with Reach Capital and their portfolio to develop an approach for edtech companies and their investors to get low-cost evidence of efficacy. We are also getting our recommendations down in the form of guidelines for edtech companies to get usable evidence. The document is expected to be released at SIIA’s Education Impact Symposium in July.

Carnegie Summit 2017 Recap

If you’ve never been to Carnegie Summit, we highly recommend it.

This was our first year attending Carnegie Foundation’s annual conference in San Francisco, and we only wish we had checked it out sooner. Chief Scientist Andrew Jaciw attended on behalf of Empirical Education, and he took over our twitter account for the duration of the event. Below is a recap of his live tweeting, interspersed with additional thoughts too verbose for twitter’s strict character limitations.

Day 1

Curious about what I will learn. On my mind: Tony Bryk’s distinction between evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence. I am also thinking of how the approaches to be discussed connect to ideas of Lee Cronbach - he was very interested in timeliness and relevance of research findings and the limited reach of internal validity.

I enjoyed T. Bryk’s talk. These points resonated.

Improvement Science involves a hands-on approach to identifying systemic sources of predictable failure. This is appealing because it puts problem solving at the core, while realizing the context-specificity of what will actually work!

Day 2

Jared Bolte - Great talk! Improvement Science contrasts with traditional efficacy research by jumping right in to solve problems, instead of waiting. This raises an important question: What is the cost of delaying action to wait for efficacy findings? I am reminded of Lee Cronbach’s point: the half-life of empirical propositions is short!

This was an excellent session with Tony Bryk and John Easton. There were three important questions posed.

Day 3

Excited to Learn about PDSA cycles

Presenting at AERA 2017

We will again be presenting at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Join the Empirical Education team in San Antonio, TX from April 27 – 30, 2017.

Research Presentations will include the following.

Increasing Accessibility of Professional Development (PD): Evaluation of an Online PD for High School Science Teachers
Authors: Adam Schellinger, Andrew P Jaciw, Jenna Lynn Zacamy, Megan Toby, & Li Lin
In Event: Promoting and Measuring STEM Learning
Saturday, April 29 10:35am to 12:05pm
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, River Level, Room 7C

Abstract: This study examines the impact of an online teacher professional development, focused on academic literacy in high school science classes. A one-year randomized control trial measured the impact of Internet-Based Reading Apprenticeship Improving Science Education (iRAISE) on instructional practices and student literacy achievement in 27 schools in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Researchers found a differential impact of iRAISE favoring students with lower incoming achievement (although there was no overall impact of iRAISE on student achievement). Additionally, there were positive impacts on several instructional practices. These findings are consistent with the specific goals of iRAISE: to provide high-quality, accessible online training that improves science teaching. Authors compare these results to previous evaluations of the same intervention delivered through a face-to-face format.

How Teacher Practices Illuminate Differences in Program Impact in Biology and Humanities Classrooms
Authors: Denis Newman, Val Lazarev, Andrew P Jaciw, & Li Lin
In Event: Poster Session 5 - Program Evaluation With a Purpose: Creating Equal Opportunities for Learning in Schools
Friday, April 28 12:25 to 1:55pm
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Street Level, Stars at Night Ballroom 4

Abstract: This paper reports research to explain the positive impact in a major RCT for students in the classrooms of a subgroup of teachers. Our goal was to understand why there was an impact for science teachers but not for teachers of humanities, i.e., history and English. We have labelled our analysis “moderated mediation” because we start with the finding that the program’s success was moderated by the subject taught by the teacher and then go on to look at the differences in mediation processes depending on the subject being taught. We find that program impact teacher practices differ by mediator (as measured in surveys and observations) and that mediators are differentially associated with student impact based on context.

Are Large-Scale Randomized Controlled Trials Useful for Understanding the Process of Scaling Up?
Authors: Denis Newman, Val Lazarev, Jenna Lynn Zacamy, & Li Lin
In Event: Poster Session 3 - Applied Research in School: Education Policy and School Context
Thursday, April 27 4:05 to 5:35pm
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom Level, Hemisfair Ballroom 2

Abstract: This paper reports a large scale program evaluation that included an RCT and a parallel study of 167 schools outside the RCT that provided an opportunity for the study of the growth of a program and compare the two contexts. Teachers in both contexts were surveyed and a large subset of the questions are asked of both scale-up teachers and teachers in the treatment schools of the RCT. We find large differences in the level of commitment to program success in the school. Far less was found in the RCT suggesting that a large scale RCT may not be capturing the processes at play in the scale up of a program.

We look forward to seeing you at our sessions to discuss our research. You can also view our presentation schedule here.

SREE Spring 2017 Conference Recap

Several Empirical Education team members attended the annual SREE conference in Washington, DC from March 4th - 5th. This year’s conference theme, “Expanding the Toolkit: Maximizing Relevance, Effectiveness and Rigor in Education Research,” included a variety of sessions focused on partnerships between researchers and practitioners, classroom instruction, education policy, social and emotional learning, education and life cycle transitions, and research methods. Andrew Jaciw, Chief Scientist at Empirical Education, chaired a session about Advances in Quasi-Experimental Design. Jaciw also presented a poster on developing a “systems check” for efficacy studies under development. For more information on this diagnostic approach to evaluation, watch this Facebook Live video of Andrew’s discussion of the topic.

Other highlights of the conference included Sean Reardon’s keynote address highlighting uses of “big data” in creating context and generating hypotheses in education research. Based on data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), Sean shared several striking patterns of variation in achievement and achievement gaps among districts across the country, as well as correlations between achievement gaps and socioeconomic status. Sean challenged the audience to consider how to expand this work and use this kind of “big data” to address critical questions about inequality in academic performance and education attainment. The day prior to the lecture, our CEO, Denis Newman, attended a workshop lead by Sean and colleagues (Workshop C) that provided a detailed overview of the SEDA data and how it can be used in education research. The psychometric work to generate equivalent scores for every district in the country, the basis for his findings, was impressive and we look forward to their solving the daunting problem of extending the database to encompass individual schools.