blog posts and news stories

Conference Season 2015

Empirical researchers are traveling all over the country this conference season. Come meet our researchers as we discuss our work at the following events. If you plan to attend any of these, please get in touch so we can schedule a time to speak with you, or come by to see us at our presentations.

AEFP

We are pleased to announce that we will have our fifth appearance at the 40th annual conference of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP). Join us in the afternoon on Friday, February 27th at the Marriott Wardman Park, Washington DC as Empirical’s Senior Research Scientist Valeriy Lazarev and CEO Denis Newman present on Methods of Teacher Evaluation in Concurrent Session 7. Denis will also be the acting discussant and chair on Friday morning at 8am in Session 4.07 titled Preparation/Certification and Evaluation of Leaders/Teachers.

SREE

Attendees of this spring’s Society for Research on Effectiveness (SREE) Conference, held in Washington, DC March 5-7, will have the opportunity to discuss instructional strategies and programs to improve mathematics with Empirical Education’s Chief Scientist Andrew P. Jaciw. The presentation, Assessing Impacts of Math in Focus, a ‘Singapore Math’ Program for American Schools, will take place on Friday, March 6 at 1pm in the Park Hyatt Hotel, Ballroom Level Gallery 3.

ASCD

This year’s 70th annual conference for ASCD will take place in Houston, TX on March 21-23. We invite you to schedule a meeting with CEO Denis Newman while he’s there.

AERA

We will again be presenting at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Join the Empirical Education team in Chicago, Illinois from April 16-20, 2015. Our presentations will cover research under the Division H (Research, Evaluation, and Assessment in Schools) Section 2 symposium: Program Evaluation in Schools.

1. Formative Evaluation on the Process of Scaling Up Reading Apprenticeship Authors: Jenna Lynn Zacamy, Megan Toby, Andrew P. Jaciw, and Denis Newman
2. The Evaluation of Internet-based Reading Apprenticeship Improving Science Education (iRAISE) Authors: Megan Toby, Jenna Lynn Zacamy, Andrew P. Jaciw, and Denis Newman

We look forward to seeing you at our sessions to discuss our research. As soon as we have the schedule for these presentations, we will post them here. As has become tradition, we plan to host yet another of our popular AERA receptions. Details about the reception will follow in the months to come.

Factor Analysis Shows Facets of Teaching

The Empirical team has illustrated quantitatively what a lot of people have suspected. Basic classroom management, keeping things moving along, and the sense that the teacher is in control are most closely associated with achievement gains. We used teacher evaluation data collected by the Measures of Effective Teaching project to develop a three-factor model and found that only one factor was associated with VAM scores. Two other factors—one associated with constructivist pedagogy and the other with positive attitudes—were unrelated to short-term student outcomes. Val Lazarev and Denis Newman presented this work at the Association for Education Finance and Policy Annual Conference on March 13, 2014. And on May 7, Denis Newman and Kristen Koue conducted a workshop on the topic at the CCSSO’s SCEE Summit. The workshop emphasized the way that factors not directly associated with spring test scores can be very important in personnel decisions. The validation of these other factors may require connections to student achievements such as staying in school, getting into college, or pursuing a STEM career in years after the teacher’s direct contact.

Conference Season 2011

Empirical researchers will again be on the road this conference season, and we’ve included a few new conference stops. Come meet our researchers as we discuss our work at the following events. If you will be present at any of these, please get in touch so we can schedule a time to speak with you, or come by to see us at our presentations.

NCES-MIS

This year, the NCES-MIS “Deep in the Heart of Data” Conference will offer more than 80 presentations, demonstrations, and workshops conducted by information system practitioners from federal, state, and local K-12 agencies.

Come by and say hello to one of our research managers, Joseph Townsend, who will be running Empirical Education’s table display at the Hilton Hotel in Austin, Texas from February 23-25th. Joe will be presenting interactive demonstrations of MeasureResults, which allows school district staff to conduct complete program evaluations online.

SREE

Attendees of this spring’s Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) Conference, held in Washington, DC March 3-5, will have the opportunity to discuss questions of generalizability with Empirical Education’s Chief Scientist, Andrew Jaciw and President, Denis Newman at two poster sessions. The first poster, entitled External Validity in the Context of RCTs: Lessons from the Causal Explanatory Tradition applies insights from Lee Cronbach to current RCT practices. In the second poster, The Use of Moderator Effects for Drawing Generalized Causal Inferences, Jaciw addresses issues in multi-site experiments. They look forward to discussing these posters both online at the conference website and in person.

AEFP

We are pleased to announce that we will have our first showing this year at the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) Annual Conference. Join us in the afternoon on Friday, March 25th at the Grand Hyatt in Seattle, WA as Empirical’s research scientist, Valeriy Lazarev, presents a poster on Cost-benefit analysis of educational innovation using growth measures of student achievement.

AERA

We will again have a strong showing at the 2011 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference. Join us in festive New Orleans, April 8-12 for the final results on the efficacy of the PCI Reading Program, our qualitative findings from the first year of formative research on our MeasureResults online program evaluation tool, and more.

View our AERA presentation schedule for more details and a complete list of our participants.

SIIA

This year’s SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit will take place in gorgeous San Francisco, just 45 minutes north of Empirical Education’s headquarters in the Silicon Valley. We invite you to schedule a meeting with us at the Palace Hotel from May 22-24.