An Exploratory Study of Relationship between Educational Reform Practices and Student Achievement in the Urban Systemic Intiatives

Westat Inc, Bethesda MD

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal requests grant funding for a small-scale, exploratory study designed to develop new analytic tools for examining the relationship between strategies for systemic reform of urban educational practices and student achievement. The research outlined in this proposal builds upon work that Westat has been performing for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Systemic Initiative (SI) programs over the past 8 years. Specifically, Westat proposes to collect trend data that can be used to characterize the range of activities that have received support under the various Urban Systemic Initiative projects. Westat also plans to conduct case studies and other analyses to explore the relationship between specific educational reform practices and student achievement. Specifically, the proposed research represents a venture into emerging and potentially transformative research ideas, as well as application of new approaches to an established research topic i.e., the exploration of new methods for assessing the link between educational reform and student performance on accountability assessments.