Education Research

Education research is a major focus at IMPAQ International. Our education research staff members include recognized experts in the conduct of rigorous research and evaluation of programs, policies, and practices in education. Our staff has substantial experience in conducting and disseminating rigorous research regarding the implementation and effectiveness of major reform programs in U.S. K-12 education. Our staff is experienced in developing and applying a broad array of sophisticated analytic techniques for accurately estimating the effects of education interventions on student engagement, attendance, retention, grade promotion, graduation, and academic achievement. IMPAQ has expertise in methods for the valid estimation of program effects in the context of individual and cluster randomized trials, multi-level modeling, the development and application of quasi-experimental techniques including comparative interrupted time series and propensity score matching.

IMPAQ’s Education Research staff have designed and carried out a wide variety of research evaluation studies in education, including large scale random assignment studies of major educational interventions and quasi-experimental studies of the effects of education intervention on participant outcomes. They have worked on a variety of important, high-profile education and youth development projects for the U.S. Department of Education, private foundations, and other government agencies.

Our areas of expertise include:

Early Education
Middle Grades
High Schools
Adolescent Literacy
Postsecondary Access and Education
Teacher Preparation and Professional Development
Youth Engagement and Development
Career and Technical Education and Workforce Development

Reading Apprenticeship Evaluation

IMPAQ is currently conducting a multi-year random assignment study of the effects of the “Reading Apprenticeship” instructional model on student achievement in literacy content courses. WestEd’s Reading Apprenticeship framework combines affective and cognitive aspects of literacy support, promoting adolescents' engagement and achievement in reading and writing in their content area classes. Through this work, SLI has gained a national reputation for leadership in professional development programs to improve adolescent literacy and for research on adolescent literacy development. In October 2010, WestEd received a grant from the Department of Education Investing in Innovation fund to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship model in 4 states.

As part of this grant, IMPAQ International, in collaboration with WestEd and Empirical Education, Inc., is leading a school level random assignment study assessing the impact of implementing the Reading Apprenticeship approach in 9th - 11th grade English Language Arts, Biology, and U.S. History courses. The evaluation focuses on three primary questions.

To what extent was the Reading Apprenticeship model fully implemented in the study sites?
What are the effects of the Reading Apprenticeship intervention on literacy instruction and classroom environment in the relevant courses?
What are the effects of the reading apprenticeship intervention on literacy achievement, content knowledge, and student attitudes and behaviors with respect to literacy?

The evaluation will also attempt to assess the cumulative effects of exposure to the Reading Apprenticeship model in multiple courses, as well as to evaluate the effects of the intervention for English language learners in particular.

Random assignment of schools is scheduled to occur at the end of March, 2011. The study will follow participating schools through three years of implementation ending in the spring of 2014. The final report will be published in June of 2015.

Check and Connect Evaluation

IMPAQ is collaborating with the American Institutes for Research and the University of Minnesota on an Institute for Education Sciences (IES) funded random assignment study of the Check & Connect intervention. Check & Connect is a dropout prevention program with demonstrated effectiveness with students with disabilities. The proposed study is an efficacy trial testing the effect of Check & Connect on general education students (i.e. students who do not receive special education services) who show signs that they are at-risk for dropping out of high school. The study uses a within-school random assignment design where students who meet established criteria for risk will be assigned either to participate in the Check & Connect program or not. A total of 10 high schools in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) will participate in the study, and across those schools, a total of 750 at-risk 9th grade students will comprise the study sample. These students will be randomly assigned to a treatment group that will be invited to participate in the program or a control group that is not.

This 4-year study has two specific aims:

To generate rigorous evidence about the effects of Check & Connect on engagement, school completion, and academic outcomes of general education students who meet specific criteria for dropout risk; and
To document the implementation of Check & Connect with at-risk high school students.

Thus the primary goal is to estimate the effects of the program on general education students at-risk for failing to graduate high school. We will assess impacts on a range of policy-relevant student outcomes. We will also conduct a set of implementation analyses to address application of the intervention to at-risk students in varied settings. As part of these analyses, we will examine treatment fidelity, service contrast with the control group, and program costs. This study will substantially contribute to the knowledge base about effective intervention with students who show signs of disengagement and risk for dropping out of high school. Random assignment will begin in the summer of 2011, and the study will be completed in the summer of 2015.

Early Indicators of High School Graduation

The failure of nearly one million students to graduate from high school each year is a major challenge for the United States. Although estimation techniques and estimated graduation rates vary across studies, nearly all available estimates suggest that a large number of students fail to graduate from high school. Some estimates indicate that that only 69 percent of grade 9 public school students graduate from high school within four years of entering high school. This problem is particularly severe for poor and minority students. State education agencies and local school districts have made progress toward developing and methods for identifying students that are falling off-track, but important questions remain

IMPAQ International has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Southeast Regional Education Laboratory to conduct a study identifying “early indicators” of high school success or failure. This project will focus on data from Broward County Public Schools (BCPS), the second largest school district in Florida and the sixth largest school district in the United States. Based on previous research, the study will identify academic and behavioral indicators that predict whether or not students graduate from high school, and develop a set of indicators that identify whether or not BCPS students are “on-track” for high school graduation in grades 6 and 9 (i.e., whether or not they are at risk of failing to graduate from high school). The study will examine the prevalence of “off-track” status in the 6th and 9th grades, as well as the extent to which these indicators accurately identify students at risk of school failure.