Policymakers have expressed increased interest in program-level higher education accountability measures as a supplement to, or in place of, institution-level metrics. But it is unclear what these measures should look like. In this report, we assess the ways program-level data could be developed to facilitate federal accountability. Evidence shows…

This study sought to better understand present-day relationships between institutional and programmatic characteristics and their impact on student outcomes at postsecondary career and technical schools. This is critical given: (a) the existence of a significant middle-skills gap impacting the U.S. economy; (b) a lack of research and guidance for…

This article outlines how Master of Public Administration (MPA)/Master of Public Policy (MPP) programs can integrate a project-based learning opportunity to study curricular design and accreditation needs in their quantitative courses. Bridging together theory and the practical implications of data collection and analysis is important for…

Background: Traditional survey efforts to gather outcome data at scale have significant limitations, including cost, time, and respondent burden. This pilot study explored new and innovative large-scale methods of collecting and validating data from publicly available sources. Taking advantage of emerging data science techniques, we leverage…

Dual enrollment is a complex policy issue and is increasingly of interest to state policymakers. Adequate data and data systems are critical to informing dual enrollment policy, yet the data at the federal level and many state data systems suffer from common challenges and lack the capacity to address dual enrollment policy. We review the…

Even under ideal conditions, teaching is tough work. Facing unrelenting pressure from administrators and parents and caught in a race against time to improve student outcomes, educators can easily become discouraged (or worse, burn out completely) without a robust coaching system in place to support them. For more than 20 years, perfecting such a…

The Welsh Baccalaureate qualification has been adopted by most secondary schools within Wales. In years 12 and 13 (ages 16-18), 50% of the qualification requires students to collect primary data and also conduct secondary data analysis to write a 5000 word investigative report. To help teachers develop effective teaching strategies and resources,…

Purpose: A faculty development program (FDP) introduced postsecondary instructors to a module focused on the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus, a socio-hydrologic issue (SHI) and a sustainability challenge. This study aims to examine factors influencing faculty interest in adopting the instructional resources and faculty experience with the FDP,…

This article examines the concept of credible evidence in Extension evaluations with specific attention to the measures and measurement strategies used to collect and create data. Credibility depends on multiple factors, including data quality and methodological rigor, characteristics of the stakeholder audience, stakeholder beliefs about the…

These are the appendices for the report "The Effects of an Academic Language Program on Student Reading Outcomes." This study investigated WordGen Elementary, a program designed to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students' ability to understand and communicate academic language and their general reading skill. The program provider…

More aggregate data on school performance is available than ever before, opening up new possibilities for applied researchers interested in assessing the effectiveness of school-level interventions quickly and at a relatively low cost by implementing comparative interrupted times series (CITS) designs. We examine the extent to which effect…

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)'s mission is to break the link between family income and educational achievement. This is achieved through summarising the best available evidence in plain language, generating new evidence of 'what works' to improve teaching and learning, and supporting teachers and school leaders to use research evidence…

Institutions of higher education are required by U.S. accrediting bodies to articulate their conceptual framework and develop a viable program improvement plan through a continuous reflective process of progressive problem solving that enables data-driven decision-making practices. To meet or exceed national accreditation standards for leadership,…

In the coming years, public programs will capture even more and richer data than they do now, including data from web-based tools used by participants in employment services, from tablet-based educational curricula, and from electronic health records for Medicaid beneficiaries. Program evaluators seeking to take full advantage of these data…

Though we have recently witnessed the "exponential production of digital data to measure, analyze, and predict educational performance" (Salajan & Jules, this volume), there has not been sufficient attention given to the quantitative methods that are used to process and transform this data in order to arrive at findings related to…