Out of the Tower, Into the Schools: How New IES Goals Will Reshape Researcher Roles

1. Out of the Tower, Into the Schools: How New IES Goals Will Reshape Researcher Roles John Q. Easton AERA 2010 Conference Presidential Session May 2, 2010

2. Kenwood Academy High School • High-poverty school on Chicago’s Southside • Silver Medal School: US News and World Report • Freshman On-Track Rate Up 20 points • About 90 percent of students say school does a good (or better) job with academic rigor and supportive staff

3. SOURCE: Consortium on Chicago School Research, What Matters, 2007. Each Week of Absence in the Ninth Grade Is Associated With a Dramatically Reduced Likelihood of Graduating

4. Only Students Who Exceed Standards on Their Eighth-Grade ISAT Math Tests Have at Least a 62% Chance of Scoring 20 on Their ACT SOURCE: Consortium on Chicago School Research, Path to 20, 2008.

5. ACT Success: Good Grades, Not Test Practice Two Key Findings • Students made smaller gains from the PLAN to the ACT the more their teachers spent class time on test practice and used materials from test-prep companies • Regardless of whether students start with high or low test scores, those who earn As and Bs in their classes make big gains in a short period of time. Juniors who barely pass with Cs and Ds either make no progress in their scores (moving from the PLAN to ACT), or fall behind.

6. Five Key Themes Covered • Make our work more relevant and useful • Study schools as organizations • Create new measures and expand repertoire of rigorous methodologies • Deepen understanding of teaching quality • Train new generation of researchers

7. NAEP Math Report: Explaining Student Performance in Key Content Area

8. Boston Public Schools and Harvard: Partners in Fixing Vocabulary Challenge

10. Students Who Were Accepted Into a 4-year College Were Much More Likely to Enroll if They Completed the FAFSA SOURCE: Consortium on Chicago School Research, Potholes, 2008.

11. “Data Wise” Improvement Process: Eight Steps for Using Test Data to Improve Teaching and Learning SOURCE: Data Wise, Harvard Education Press, 2005.

12. Coming Soon From NCEE: The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts • First large-scale randomized controlled trial of charter schools with lotteries in multiple states • Weighs in on relevant research debate: Whether, how, and under what circumstances charter schools improve the outcomes of students who attend them • Correlational analysis by length of school day/school year, enrollment, autonomy, student-teacher ratio, ability grouping, concentration of poverty, average student achievement levels, locale (urban, rural, etc.), autonomy, revenues, management, and years operating

13. Relationships of Essential Supports With Improvements in Value-Added, 1997–2005 SOURCE: Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons From Chicago.

14. Predicting Achievement: Short Grit Scale by Duckworth et al. • I am a hard worker. • I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one. • I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest. • I finish whatever I begin. • Setbacks don’t discourage me. • I am diligent. • New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.

15. New Roles for Researchers in Action-Oriented Partnerships • Balance long-term knowledge with providing service to districts • Design studies and refine research questions rather than create questions. • Understand how to speak, write and present to audience of practitioners and policy makers. • Use descriptive data to reveal practices and outcomes in useful ways. • Build a theory of action around the topic of concern. • Consider the interconnectedness of classroom, school and district relationships when creating interventions.