The investigators will implement and study a model for building the capacity of a school district to make systemic use of data so that teachers and school-based instructional leaders can develop the know-how, tools, and support systems to assess, quantify, analyze, isolate, diagnose, and take actions to shape the mathematics achievement in struggling students. Capacity-building opportunities will be provided through district-level workshops; formal university-based coursework in assessment, evaluation, and data-based decision-making culminating in certificates and graduate degrees; internship; and on-site coaching activities. Technology will be incorporated in the form of existing distance learning courses and web-based instructional modules, as well as school/classroom data management systems that support proximal instructional decisions by tracking process-outcome relationships. The focus will be on mathematics teaching and learning, particularly on addressing achievement gaps. The partners are Teachers College Columbia University (home institution of the PI and Co-PI) and East Ramapo School District, New York, along with qualified consultants in mathematics education and technology and a distinguished advisory panel.
The project deliberately focuses on one bounded school system to authentically implement and evaluate a systemic model of intervention delivery. The pilot intervention will aim to demonstrate proof of concept using a 3-year timeline. The research program for the pilot intervention will have two phases. The formative phase (Years 1-2) will aim to develop, field-test and fine-tune new and existing instructional materials, prototypes, and delivery models for the intervention, including necessary instrumentation to monitor field processes and outcomes. The summative phase (Year 3), will formally document process-outcome relationships, initial impact, replicability, and costs of implementing the formatively-tested intervention, using treatment and comparison cohorts of teachers and students at the partner district.
Intellectual Merit:
How well teachers align instruction and assessment to mathematics content standards, adapt instruction to meet the developmental needs of diverse students, and monitor student learning at the local level are factors well-supported by research as impacting student performance. Particularly, achievement gap-reducing schools and teachers have been found to make better use of data for making specific changes in their day-to-day practices. To foster change within organizations, many have pointed towards a need for decision-oriented evaluation approaches and for "mainstreaming" evaluation.
Broader Impacts:
The proposed program will pilot-test, refine, and eventually, replicate a model involving university-school system collaborations that could potentially serve the northeastern region of the U.S. The ultimate aim will be to develop exportable materials, tools, support systems that can be implemented widely in a subsequent scale-up phase at other schools and district sites.
