Since 1987, the Air Force has used the Strength Aptitude Test (SAT), a test of physical strength, to screen and classify enlisted personnel into career specialties. In this study, RAND evaluated the ...usefulness, validity, and fairness of the SAT, focusing on implementation of the SAT at military entrance processing stations and the process for setting strength requirements for career fields.
Pain and gain Stecher, Brian M; Epstein, Scott; Hamilton, Laura S ...
2008, 20081107
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
The Implementing Standards-Based Accountability (ISBA) study was designed to examine the strategies that states, districts, and schools are using to implement standards-based accountability under the ...No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This monograph presents information regarding the implementation of NCLB in California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania from 2003-2004 through 2005-2006, including the final results of the ISBA project.
Since 2001-2002, standards-based accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 have shaped the work of public school teachers and administrators in the United States. This book ...sheds light on how accountability policies have been translated into actions at the district, school, and classroom levels in three states.
Presents the findings of a multiyear study of the effectiveness of reform-oriented science and mathematics teaching (instructional practices for engaging students actively in their own learning and ...enhancing the development of complex cognitive skills)-specifically, whether such practices are associated with higher student achievement and whether that association is sensitive to the aspects of achievement that are measured. (CD-ROM enclosed.)
Presents results of a three-year evaluation of Learn and Serve America, Higher Education (LSAHE), a program sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service that aims to increase ...involvement in community service by ...
This report presents results of a three-year evaluation of Learn and Serve America, Higher Education (LSAHE), a program sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service that aims to increase involvement in community service by higher education institutions and students. LSAHE emphasizes an approach to community service, called service-learning, that focuses on the development of service providers as well as service recipients. Between 1995 and 1997, about one in every eight higher education institutions nationwide participated in LSAHE by developing service-learning courses and programs. The evaluation described the major activities and accomplishments of LSAHE-supported programs; assessed the impacts of LSAHE on students, communities, and institutions; and determined returns on the public investment in LSAHE. Results show that LSAHE was highly successful in serving communities and had mixed success in promoting student development and institutional change. Although expenditures exceeded the value of LSAHE to communities, value increased each year, suggesting that long-term positive returns may occur.
Studies on blended education pay little attention to implementation, thus limiting the understanding of how such programs contribute to student math learning. This article examines the implementation ...of a widely used blended algebra curriculum and the relationship between implementation and student outcomes. The study was conducted in 74 middle schools and 73 high schools in 51 school districts located in seven states. The study included both treatment and control schools. The blended-curriculum combines inquiry-based teaching and learning with technology (math software). The study found that teachers implemented the blended curriculum with low fidelity. Teachers had most difficulty allocating the recommended amount of time for the math lab and content. The study also found that the blended-curriculum teachers in the second year reverted to more traditional approach to instruction and spent less time on inquiry based instruction than in the first year, although they continued to use this approach at a higher level than teachers in the control schools. The study findings suggest that teacher adjustment of instruction in the second year, specifically balancing the amount of traditional instruction with inquiry instruction, in combination to the use of the math software contributed to the performance of the program.
Study to investigate the relationships between student achievement in mathematics and science and the use of these new instructional practices.
In our increasingly technological society, improving ...students’ performance in mathematics and science has become a critical challenge. During the 1990s, the National Science Foundation funded a series of Systemic Initiatives designed to change the way these subjects are being taught in schools throughout the country. These initiatives sought to align all aspects of the educational system in support of ambitious curriculum and performance standards, with particular emphasis on teacher training and professional development to promote effective changes in instructional practice. States, urban school districts, and consortia designed programs to implement reforms that were consistent with NSF’s goals, and in 1996, RAND undertook a study to investigate the relationships between student achievement in mathematics and science and the use of these new instructional practices. The authors examined six sites that were implementing systemic reforms during the 1996-97 school year, and a similar set of sites during the 1997-98 school year. This report presents the results of their analysis of data from the first year of the study. The findings provide some (albeit weak) support for the hypothesis that the reform instructional practices are associated with improved student achievement in both mathematics and science. However, as with most large-scale field studies, there are many factors that may have artificially increased or decreased the observed effect sizes. Nevertheless, the consistency of the results across sites is encouraging. Data from the second year of the study will provide additional evidence to aid in the interpretation of these findings.
Large-scale educational studies frequently require accurate descriptions of classroom practices to judge implementation and impact. However, it can be difficult to obtain these descriptions in a ...timely, efficient manner. To address this problem, the authors developed a vignette-based measure of one aspect of mathematics instructional practice, reform-oriented instruction. Teachers read contextualized descriptions of teaching practices that varied in terms of reform-oriented instruction, and rated the degree to which the options corresponded to their own likely behaviors. Responses from 80 fourth-grade teachers yielded fairly consistent responses across two parallel vignettes and moderate correlations with other scales of reform-oriented instruction derived from classroom observations, surveys, and logs. The results suggested that the vignettes measure important aspects of reform-oriented instruction that are not captured by other measurement methods. Based on this work, it appears that vignettes can be a useful tool for research on instructional practice, but cognitive interviews with participating teachers provided insight into possible improvements to the items.
Pain and Gain Stecher, Brian M; Epstein, Scott; Hamilton, Laura S ...
2008
eBook
The Implementing Standards-Based Accountability (ISBA) study was designed to examine the strategies that states, districts, and schools are using to implement standards-based accountability under the ...No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and how these strategies are associated with classroom practices and student achievement in mathematics and science. This monograph presents the final results of the ISBA project. It contains descriptive information regarding the implementation of NCLB in California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania from 2003-2004 through 2005-2006. It is a companion to MG-589-NSF, Standards-Based Accountability Under No Child Left Behind (2007), and updates those findings with an additional year of data, permitting further analyses of state-to-state differences and longer-term trends. This study suggests that school improvement efforts might be more effective if they were responsive to local conditions and customized to address the specific causes of failure and the capacity of the schools in question.
A number of challenges are encountered when evaluating a large-scale, multisite educational reform aimed at changing classroom practice. The challenges include substantial variability in ...implementation with little information on actual practice, lack of common, appropriate outcome measures, and the need to synthesize evaluation results across multiple study sites. This article describes an approach to addressing these challenges in the context of a study of the relationships between student achievement and instructional practices in the National Science Foundation 's Systemic Initiatives (SI) program. We gathered data from eleven SI sites and investigated relationships at the site level and pooled across sites using a planned meta-analytic approach. We found small but consistent positive relationships between teachers' reported use of standards-based instruction and student achievement. The article also describes the ways in which we addressed the challenges discussed, as well as a number of additional obstacles that need to be addressed to improve future evaluations of large-scale reforms.
