The purpose of this document is to describe the methods RAND used to analyze achievement for 23 personalized learning (PL) schools for the 2012-13 through 2013-14 academic years. This work was performed at the request of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), as part of a multi-year evaluation contract. The 23 schools were selected from a…

This report summarizes the complex research literature on quantitative methods for assessing how impacts of educational interventions on instructional practices and student learning differ across students, educators, and schools. It also provides technical guidance about the use and interpretation of these methods. The research topics addressed…

This article introduces a framework designed to improve students' awareness of the need to critically evaluate websites as sources of information and to improve their skill at doing so. The framework, called the WWWDOT framework, encourages students to think about at least six dimensions when evaluating a website: (1) Who wrote this and what…

Differentiated instruction is commonly believed to be critical to improving the quality and efficiency of teachers' instructional repertoires (Fischer & Rose, 2001; Tomlinson, 2004). Tomlinson (2000) describes differentiation in four domains: content, process, product, and learning environment. Content differentiation involves varying…

Studies that examine the impacts of education interventions on key student, teacher, and school outcomes typically collect data on large samples and on many outcomes. In analyzing these data, researchers typically conduct multiple hypothesis tests to address key impact evaluation questions. Tests are conducted to assess intervention effects for…

Comments on S. Pogrow's suggestion that educational programs should be judged by the degree to which schools using them achieve "surprising scores." Emphasizes the importance of the use of control groups in program evaluation. (SLD)

This booklet contains questions and answers about random assignment in program evaluation and intervention research. The main purpose of program evaluation research in education is to determine whether programs help the students they are designed to serve and whether new ideas for education programs still under development are worthy of extension…

Explores issues in evaluating exemplary programs, including the measurement of the degree to which the program is exemplary or promising. Suggests that comparison (control) group analysis can mislead researchers about the effectiveness of a program and suggests the use of gain scores to identify exemplary programs. (SLD)

Meta analysis refers to the synthesis of research findings in which results of multiple studies are compared, contrasted, and reanalyzed. Benefits of meta analysis to the field of health research include: (1) the transformation of diverse findings into a common metric; and (2) improvement of research techniques and reports. (JN)

This article considers various kinds of probability and non-probability samples in both experimental and survey studies. Throughout, how a sample is chosen is stressed. Size alone is not the determining consideration in sample selection. Good samples do not occur by accident; they are the result of a careful design. (Author/JAZ)

The estimation and evaluation of the effects of alternative educational or social policies is a major purpose of decision oriented, comparative evaluation studies. This paper reviews the rationale underlying the definition and interpretation of various measures of effect magnitude and examines their relevance to evalution research. (Author)

There is little research on English language learners (ELLs) in relation to learning disability (LD) assessment and identification. More important, there is a scarcity of research on models and strategies that enhance learning opportunities and outcomes for ELLs prior to an LD diagnosis. We describe in this article an innovative language…

Recruiting schools and kids to participate in drug prevention evaluations is no longer, if it ever was, a "done deal." Since the mid-1980s, schools have been inundated with requirements for drug programs and requests to cooperate with program evaluations. As a consequence, both treatment and control schools are harder to find. In addition, many…

Research efforts have established that the Mantel-Haenszel procedure (MHP) is an effective method for detecting the presence of test items exhibiting differential item functioning (DIF). While the MHP has been advocated for situations where item response theory based methods may not be usable, recent findings have suggested that the performance of…