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AERA 2022 Annual Meeting

We really enjoyed being back in-person at AERA for our first time in a few years. We missed that interaction and collaboration that can truly only come from talking and engaging in person. The theme this year—Cultivating Equitable Education Systems for the 21st Century—is highly aligned with our company goals, and we value and appreciate the extraordinary work of so many researchers and practitioners who are dedicated to discovering equitable educational solutions.

We met some of the team from ICPSR, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, and had a chance to learn about their guide to social science data preparation and archiving. We attended too many presentations to talk about so we’ll highlight a few below that stood out to us.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

On Thursday, Sze-Shun Lau and Jenna Zacamy presented the impacts of Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) on the continuous retention of teachers through their second year. The presentation was part of a roundtable discussion with Jacob Elmore, Dirk Richter, Eric Richter, Christin Lucksnat, and Stefanie Marshall.

It was a pleasure to hear about the work coming out of the University of Potsdam around examining the connections between extraversion levels of alternatively-certified teachers and their job satisfaction and student achievement, and about opportunities for early-career teachers at the University of Minnesota to be part of learning communities with whom they can openly discuss racialized matters in school settings and develop their racial consciousness. We also had the opportunity to engage in conversation with our fellow presenters about constructive supports for early-career teachers that place value on the experiences and motivating factors they bring to the table, and other commonalities in our work aiming to increase retention of teachers in diverse contexts.

Friday, April 22, 2022

Our favorite session we attended on Friday was a paper session titled Critical and Transformative Perspectives on Social and Emotional Learning. In this session, Dr. Dena Simmons, shared her paper titled Educator Freedom Dreams: Humanizing Social and Emotional Learning Through Racial Justice and talked about SEL as an approach to alleviate the stressors of systemic racism from a Critical Race Theory education perspective.

We tweeted about it from AERA.

"We cannot SEL away racism - we need structural solutions to structural problems." - @DenaSimmons at @AERA_EdResearch today.#AERA22 #AERA2022 pic.twitter.com/f36OIsWWTM

— Empirical Education (@empiricaled) April 22, 2022

Another interesting session from Friday was about the future of IES research. Jenna sat in on a small group discussion around the proposed future topic areas of IES competitions. We are most interested in if/how IES will implement the recommendation to have a “systematic, periodic, and transparent process for analyzing the state of the field and adding or removing topics as appropriate”.

Saturday, April 23, 2022

On Saturday morning, there was a symposium titled Revolutionary Love: The Role of Antiracism in Affirming the Literacies of Black and Latinx Elementary Youth. The speakers talked about the three tenants of providing thick, revolutionary love to students: believing, knowing, and doing.

Saturday afternoon, in a presidential session titled Beyond Stopping Hate: Cultivating Safe, Equitable and Affirming Educational Spaces for Asian/Asian American Students, we heard CSU Assistant Professor Edward Curammeng give crucial advice to researchers: “We need to read outside our fields, we need to re-read what we think we’ve already read, and we need to engage Asian American voices in our research.”

After our weekend at AERA, we returned home refreshed and thinking about the importance of making sure students and teachers see themselves in their school contexts - Dr. Simmons provided a crucial reminder that remaining neutral and failing to integrate the sociopolitical contexts of educational issues only furthers erasure. As our evaluation of CREATE continues, we plan to incorporate some of the great feedback we received at our roundtable session, including further exploring the motivation that led our study participants to enter the teaching profession, and how their work with CREATE adds fuel to those motivations.

Did you attend the annual AERA meeting this year? Tell us about your favorite session or something that got you thinking.

Presenting CREATE at AERA in April 2022

Attending AERA 2022

We’re finally returning to in-person conferences after the COVID-related hiatus, and we will be presenting at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). This year, the AERA meeting will be held in San Diego, our CEO Denis Newman’s new home turf since relocating to Encinitas from Palo Alto, CA.

Sze-Shun Lau and Jenna Zacamy will be attending AERA in person, joined by Andrew Jaciw virtually, to present impacts of Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) on the continuous retention of teachers through their second year.

• When: Thursday, April 21, from 2:30 to 4:00pm PDT
• Where: San Diego Convention Center, Exhibit Hall B
• AERA Roundtable session: Retaining Teachers for Diverse Contexts
• AERA Presentation: Impacts of “Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness” on the Continuous Retention of Teachers Through Their Second Year

Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE)

The work that is the basis of our AERA presentation examines the impact of CREATE—a teacher induction program—on graduation and subsequent retention of teachers through their first two years. The matched comparison group design involved 121 teachers across two cohorts. Positive impacts on retention rates were observed among Black educators only.

Retention rates after two years of teaching were 71% for non-Black educators in both CREATE and comparison groups. For Black educators the rates were 96% and 63% in CREATE and comparison, respectively. Positive impacts on mediators among Black educators, including stress-management and self-efficacy in teaching, provide a preliminary explanation of effects.

We have been exploring potential mechanisms for these impacts by posing open-ended survey questions to teachers about teacher retention. Based on their own conversations, experiences, and observations, early career teachers have cited rigid teaching standards, heavy and mentally taxing workloads, a lack of support from administration, and the low pay as common reasons teachers in their first three years of teaching leave the profession.

Factors that these teachers see as effective in retaining early-career teachers include recognition of the importance of representation in the classroom and motivation to work towards building less oppressive systems for their students. For early career teachers participating in CREATE, the access to professional learning around communication skills, changing one’s mindset, and addressing inequities are credited as potential drivers of higher retention rates.

We look forward to presenting these and other themes that have emerged from the responses these teachers provided.

We would be delighted to see you in San Diego if you’re planning to attend AERA. Let us know if we can schedule a time to meet up.

^{Photo by Lucas Davies}

Come and See Us in 2020

For a 13th consecutive year, we will be presenting research topics of interest at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). This year, the meeting will be held in our very own San Francisco. Some of our presentation topics include: Strategies for Teacher Retention, Impact Evaluation of a Science Teacher Professional Learning Intervention, and Combining Strategic Instruction Model Routines with Technology to Improve Academic Outcomes for Students with Disabilities. We’ll also be making our unprecedented appearance at AERA’s sister conference The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). Our topic will be about connecting issues of measurement to accuracy of impact estimates.

In addition to our numerous presentations at AERA and NCME, we will also be traveling to Washington DC in March to present at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). We’re included in three presentations as part of a symposium on Social and Emotional Learning in Educational Settings & Academic Learning, and we have one presentation and a poster that report the results of a randomized trial conducted as part of an i3 validation grant, and address certain methodological challenges we have faced in conducting RCTs generally. In all, we will be disseminating results of, and discussing approaches to addressing technical challenges, from three i3 projects. We have either presented at or attended the SREE conference for the past 14 years, and look forward to the rich program that SREE is bound to put together for us in 2020.

We would be delighted to see you in either San Francisco or Washington DC. Please let us know if you plan to attend either conference.

Conference Season 2019

Are you staying warm this winter? Can’t wait for the spring? Us either, with spring conference season right around the corner! Find our Empirical team traveling bicoastally in these upcoming months.

We’re starting the season right in our backyard at the Bay Area Learning Analytics (BayLAN) Conference at Stanford University on March 2, 2019! CEO Denis Newman will be presenting on a panel on the importance of efficacy with Jeremy Roschelle of Digital Promise. Senior Research Scientist Valeriy Lazarev will also be attending the conference.

The next day, the team will be off to SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas! Our goal is to talk to people about the new venture, Evidentally.

Then we’re headed to Washington D.C. to attend the annual Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) Conference! Andrew Jaciw will be presenting “A Study of the Impact of the CREATE Residency Program on Teacher Socio-Emotional and Self-Regulatory Outcomes”. We will be presenting on Friday March 8, 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM during the “Social and Emotional Learning in Education Settings” sessions in Ballroom 1. Denis will also be attending and with Andrew, meeting with many research colleagues. If you can’t catch us in D.C., you can find Andrew back in the Bay Area at the sixth annual Carnegie Foundation Summit.

For the last leg of spring conferences, we’ll be back at the American Educational Research Association’s Annual (AERA) Meeting in Toronto, Canada from April 6th to 9th. There you’ll be able to hear more about the CREATE Teacher Residency Research Study presented by Andrew Jaciw, joined by Vice President of Research Operations Jenna Zacamy along with our new Research Manager, Audra Wingard. And for the first time in 10 years, you won’t be finding Denis at AERA… Instead he’ll be at the ASU GSV Summit in San Diego, California!

AERA 2018 Recap: The Possibilities and Necessity of a Rigorous Education Research Community

This year’s AERA annual meeting on “The Dreams, Possibilities, and Necessity of Public Education,” was fittingly held in the city with the largest number of public school students in the country—New York. Against this radically diverse backdrop, presenters were encouraged to diversify both the format and topics of presentations in order to inspire thinking and “confront the struggles for public education.”

AERA’s sheer size may risk overwhelming its attendees, but in other ways, it came as a relief. At a time when educators and education remain under-resourced, it was heartening to be reminded that a large, vibrant community of dedicated and intelligent people exists to improve educational opportunities for all students.

One theme that particularly stood out is that researchers are finding increasingly creative ways to use existing usage data from education technology products to measure impact and implementation. This is a good thing when it comes to reducing the cost of research and making it more accessible to smaller businesses and nonprofits. For example, in a presentation on a software-based knowledge competition for nursing students, researchers used usage data to identify components of player styles and determine whether these styles had a significant effect on student performance. In our Edtech Research Guidelines, Empirical similarly recommends that edtech companies take advantage of their existing usage data to run impact and implementation analyses, without using more expensive data collection methods. This can help significantly reduce the cost of research studies—rather than one study that costs $3 million, companies can consider multiple lower-cost studies that leverage usage data and give the company a picture of how the product performs in a greater diversity of contexts.

Empirical staff themselves presented on a variety of topics, including quasi-experiments on edtech products; teacher recruitment, evaluation, and retention; and long-term impact evaluations. In all cases, Empirical reinforced its commitment to innovative, low-cost, and rigorous research. You can read more about the research projects we presented in our previous AERA post.

Finally, Empirical was delighted to co-host the Division H AERA Reception at the Supernova bar at Novotel Hotel. If you ever wondered if Empirical knows how to throw a party, wonder no more! A few pictures from the event are below. View all of the pictures from our event on facebook!

We had a great time and look forward to seeing everyone at the next AERA annual meeting!

Presenting at AERA 2018

We will again be presenting at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Join the Empirical Education team in New York City from April 13-17, 2018.

Research presentations will include the following.

For Quasi-Experiments on EdTech Products, What Counts as Being Treated?
Authors: Val Lazarev, Denis Newman, & Malvika Bhagwat
In Roundtable Session: Examining the Impact of Accountability Systems on Both Teachers and Students
Friday, April 13 - 2:15 to 3:45pm
New York Marriott Marquis, Fifth Floor, Westside Ballroom Salon 3

Abstract: Edtech products are becoming increasingly prevalent in K-12 schools and the needs of schools to evaluate their value for students calls for a program of rigorous research, at least at the level 2 of the ESSA standards for evidence. This paper draws on our experience conducting a large scale quasi-experiment in California schools. The nature of the product’s wide-ranging intensity of implementation presented a challenge in identifying schools that had used the product adequately enough to be considered part of the treatment group.

Planning Impact Evaluations Over the Long Term: The Art of Anticipating and Adapting
Authors: Andrew P Jaciw & Thanh Thi Nguyen
In Session: The Challenges and Successes of Conducting Large-Scale Educational Research
Saturday, April 14 - 2:15 to 3:45pm
Sheraton New York Times Square, Second Floor, Central Park East Room

Abstract: Perspective. It is good practice to identify core research questions and important elements of study designs a-priori, to prevent post-hoc “fishing” exercises and reduce the role of drawing false-positive conclusions [16,19]. However, programs in education, and evaluations of them, evolve [6] making it difficult to follow a charted course. For example, in the lifetime of a program and its evaluation, new curricular content or evidence standards for evaluations may be introduced and thus drive changes in program implementation and evaluation.

Objectives. This work presents three cases from program impact evaluations conducted through the Department of Education. In each case, unanticipated results or changes in study context had significant consequences for program recipients, developers and evaluators. We discuss responses, either enacted or envisioned, for addressing these challenges. The work is intended to serve as a practical guide for researchers and evaluators who encounter similar issues.

Methods/Data Sources/Results. The first case concerns the problem of outcome measures keeping pace with evolving content standards. For example, in assessing impacts of science programs, program developers and evaluators are challenged to find assessments that align with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Existing NGSS-aligned assessments are largely untested or in development, resulting in the evaluator having to find, adapt or develop instruments with strong reliability, and construct and face validity – ones that will be accepted by independent review and not considered over-aligned to the interventions. We describe a hands-on approach to working with a state testing agency to develop forms to assess impacts on science generally, and on constructs more-specifically aligned to the program evaluated. The second case concerns the problem of reprioritizing research questions mid-study. As noted above, researchers often identify primary (confirmatory) research questions at the outset of a study. Such questions are held to high evidence standards, and are differentiated from exploratory questions, which often originate after examining the data, and must be replicated to be considered reliable [16]. However, sometimes, exploratory analyses produce unanticipated results that may be highly consequential. The evaluator must grapple with the dilemma of whether to re-prioritize the result, or attempt to proceed with replication. We discuss this issue with reference to an RCT in which the dilemma arose. The third addresses the problem of designing and implementing a study that meets one set of evidence standards, when the results will be reviewed according to a later version of those standards. A practical question is what to do when this happens and consequently the study falls under a lower tier of the new evidence standard. With reference to an actual case, we consider several response options, including assessing the consequence of this reclassification for future funding of the program, and augmenting the research design to satisfy the new standards of evidence.

Significance. Responding to demands of changing contexts, programs in the social sciences are moving targets. They demand a flexible but well-reasoned and justified approach to evaluation. This session provides practical examples and is intended to promote discussion for generating solutions to challenges of this kind.

Indicators of Successful Teacher Recruitment and Retention in Oklahoma Rural Schools
Authors: Val Lazarev, Megan Toby, Jenna Lynn Zacamy, Denis Newman, & Li Lin
In Session: Teacher Effectiveness, Retention, and Coaching
Saturday, April 14 - 4:05 to 6:05pm
New York Marriott Marquis, Fifth Floor, Booth

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with successful recruitment and retention of teachers in Oklahoma rural school districts, in order to highlight potential strategies to address Oklahoma’s teaching shortage. The study was designed to identify teacher-level, district-level, and community characteristics that predict which teachers are most likely to be successfully recruited and retained. A key finding is that for teachers in rural schools, total compensation and increased responsibilities in job assignment are positively associated with successful recruitment and retention. Evidence provided by this study can be used to inform incentive schemes to help retain certain groups of teachers and increase retention rates overall.

Teacher Evaluation Rubric Properties and Associations with School Characteristics: Evidence from the Texas Evaluation System
Authors: Val Lazarev, Thanh Thi Nguyen, Denis Newman, Jenna Lynn Zacamy, Li Lin
In Session: Teacher Evaluation Under the Microscope
Tuesday, April 17 - 12:25 to 1:55pm
New York Marriott Marquis, Seventh Floor, Astor Ballroom

Abstract: A 2009 seminal report, The Widget Effect, alerted the nation to the tendency of traditional teacher evaluation systems to treat teachers like widgets, undifferentiated in their level of effectiveness. Since then, a growing body of research, coupled with new federal initiatives, has catalyzed the reform of such systems. In 2014-15, Texas piloted its reformed evaluation system, collecting classroom observation rubric ratings from over 8000 teachers across 51 school districts. This study analyzed that large dataset and found that 26.5 percent, compared to 2 percent under previous measures, of teachers were rated below proficient. The study also found a promising indication of low bias in the rubric ratings stemming from school characteristics, given that they were minimally associated with observation ratings.

We look forward to seeing you at our sessions to discuss our research. We’re also co-hosting a cocktail reception with Division H! If you’d like an invite, let us know.

Spring 2018 Conference Season is Taking Shape

We’ll be on the road again this spring.

SREE

Andrew Jaciw and Denis Newman will be in Washington DC for the annual spring conference of the The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), the premier conference on rigorous research. Andrew Jaciw will present his paper: Leveraging Fidelity Data to Making Sense of Impact Results: Informing Practice through Research. His presentation will be a part of Session 2I: Research Methods - Post-Random Assignment Models: Fidelity, Attrition, Mediation & More from 8-10am on Thursday, March 1.

SXSW EDU

In March, Denis Newman will be attending SXSW EDU Conference & Festival in Austin, TX and presenting on a panel along with Malvika Bhagwat, Jason Palmer, and Karen Billings titled Can Evidence Even Keep Up with EdTech? This will address how researchers and companies can produce evidence that products work—in time for educators and administrators to make a knowledgeable buying decision under accelerating timelines.

AERA

Empirical staff will be presenting in 4 different sessions at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in NYC in April, all under Division H (Research, Evaluation, and Assessment in Schools).

1. For Quasi-experiments on Edtech Products, What Counts as Being Treated?
2. Teacher evaluation rubric properties and associations with school characteristics: Evidence from the Texas evaluation system
3. Indicators of Successful Teacher Recruitment and Retention in Oklahoma Rural Schools
4. The Challenges and Successes of Conducting Large-scale Educational Research

In addition to these presentations, we are planning another of our celebrated receptions in NYC so stay tuned for details.

ISTE

A panel on our Research Guidelines has been accepted at this major convention, considered the epicenter of edtech with thousands of users and 100s of companies, held this year in Chicago from June 24–27.

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.

Empirical Education Visits Chicago

We had such a great time in windy Chicago last month for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). All of the presentations we attended were thought-provoking, and our presentations also seemed to be well-received.

The highlight of our trip, as always, was our annual reception. This year was our first time entertaining friends in a presidential suite, and the one at the Fairmont did not disappoint. Thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed an HLM, our signature cocktail. (The Hendricks Lemontwist Martini of course, what else would it stand for?)

Many of the pictures taken at our AERA reception can be found on facebook, but here is a sneak peek of some of our favorites.

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.