The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evaluates research studies that look at the effectiveness of education programs, products, practices, and policies, which the WWC calls "interventions." Many studies of education interventions make claims about impacts on students' outcomes. Some studies have designs that enable readers to make causal…

After months of waiting, the grant reviews came back: "excellent," "excellent," and "fair." What?! How can this be? Why is the third review so out of line with the first two? On more than one occasion a principal investigator (PI) has been frustrated not only by a negative funding decision but more so by the accompanying reviewer evaluation forms…

Inherent in the philosophy behind community outreach partnership center (COPC) programs and university-community collaboration is flexibility in instituting models, strategies, and solutions for those partnerships. However, evaluating collaborative efforts is difficult because each project differs according to needs, resources, and goals. One…

Educational programs and evaluations which were submitted to the Department of Education's Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP), in order to be named validated programs, were studied to identify program characteristics associated with large versus small effect size. Effect size was calculated for 165 out of 232 submittals reviewed by JDRP from…