Empirical's Chief Scientist co-authored a recently released NCEE Reference Report
Together with researchers from Abt Associates, Andrew Jaciw, Chief Scientist of Empirical Education, co–authored a recently released report entitled, “Estimating the Impacts of Educational Interventions Using State Tests or Study-Administered Tests”. The full report released by the The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) can be found on the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) website.The NCEE Reference Report examines and identifies factors that could affect the precision of program evaluations when they are based on state assessments instead of study-administered tests. The authors found that using the same test for both the pre- and post-test yielded more precise impact estimates; using two pre-test covariates, one from each type of test (state assessment and study- administered standardized test), yielded more precise impact estimates; using as the dependent variable the simple average of the post-test scores from the two types of tests yielded more precise impact estimates and smaller sample size requirements than using post-test scores from only one of the two types of tests.