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We Won a SEED Grant in 2022 with Georgia State University

Empirical Education began serving as a program evaluator of the teacher residency program, Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE), in 2015 under a subcontract with Atlanta Neighborhood Charter Schools (ANCS) as part of their Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant. In 2018, we extended this work with CREATE and Georgia State University through the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Grant Program, through the U.S. Department of Education. In 2020, we were awarded additional SEED grants to further extend our work with CREATE.

Last month, in October 2022, we were notified that this important work will receive continued funding through SEED. CREATE has proposed the following goals with this continued funding.

• Goal 1: Recruit, support, retain compassionate, skilled, anti-racist educators via residency
• Goal 2: Design and enact transformative learning opportunities for experienced educators, teacher educators, and local stakeholders
• Goal 3: Sustain effective and financially viable models for educator recruitment, support, and retention
• Goal 4: Ensure all research efforts are designed to benefit partner organizations

Empirical remains deeply committed to designing and executing a rigorous and independent evaluation that will inform partner organizations, local stakeholders, and a national audience of the potential impact and replicability of a multifaceted program that centers equity and wellness for educators and students. With this new grant, we are also committed to integrating more mixed method approaches to better align our evaluation with CREATE’s antiracist mission, and to contribute to recent conversations about what it means to conduct educational effectiveness work with an equity and social justice orientation.

Using a quasi-experimental design and mixed-methods process evaluation, we aim to understand the impact of CREATE on teachers’ equitable and effective classroom practices, student achievement, and teacher retention. We will also explore key mediating impacts, such as teacher well-being and self-compassion, and conduct a cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. Importantly, we want to explore the cost-benefit CREATE offers to local stakeholders, centering this work in the Atlanta community. This funding allows us to extend our evaluation through CREATE’s 10th cohort of residents, and to continue exploring the impact of CREATE on Cooperating Teachers and experienced educators in Atlanta Public Schools.

We Won Two SEED Grants in 2020

Empirical Education began conducting the evaluation of Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) in 2015 under a subcontract with Atlanta Neighborhood Charter Schools (ANCS) as part of their Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant. Then, in 2018, we extended this work with CREATE and Georgia State University through the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Grant Program. And now, in 2020, we were just notified, that BOTH proposals we submitted to the SEED competition to further extend our work with CREATE were awarded grants!

One of the SEED grants is an extension to the one we received in 2018 that will allow us to continue the project for two additional years (through years 4 and 5).

The other SEED award will fund new work with CREATE and  Georgia State University by adding additional cohorts of CREATE residents and conducting a quasi-experiment measuring the effectiveness of CREATE for Cooperating Teachers (that is, the mentor teachers in whose classrooms residents are placed).  The study will examine impacts on teacher effectiveness, teacher retention, and student achievement, as well as other mediating outcomes. 

The Evaluation of CREATE Continues

Empirical Education began conducting the evaluation of Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) in 2015 under a subcontract with Atlanta Neighborhood Charter Schools (ANCS) as part of their Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant. Since our last CREATE update, we’ve extended this work through the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Grant Program. The SEED grant provides continued funding for three more cohorts of participants and expands the research to include experienced educators (those not in the CREATE residency program) in CREATE schools. The grant was awarded to Georgia State University and includes partnerships with ANCS, Empirical Education (as the external evaluator), and local schools and districts.

Similar to the i3 work, we’re following a treatment and comparison group over the course of the three-year CREATE residency program and looking at impacts on teacher effectiveness, teacher retention, and student achievement. With the SEED project, we will also be able to follow Cohort 3 and 4 for an additional 1-2 years following residency. Surveys will measure perceived levels of social capital, school climate and community, collaboration, resilience, and mindfulness, in addition to other topics. Recruitment for Cohort 4 began this past spring and continued through the summer, resulting in approximately 70 new participants.

One of the goals of the expanded CREATE programming is to support the effectiveness and social capital of experienced educators in CREATE schools. Any experienced educator in a CREATE school who attends CREATE professional learning activities will be invited to participate in the research study. Surveys will measure similar topics to those measured in the quasi-experiment and we conduct individual interviews with a sample of participants to gain an in-depth understanding of the participant experience.

We have completed our first year of experienced educator research and continue to recruit participants, on an ongoing basis, into the second year of the study. We currently have 88 participants and counting.