Evaluation of Success for All PowerTeaching in Middle School Grades, United States, 2012-2016 (ICPSR 37046)

Version Date: Jun 6, 2018

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Principal Investigator(s):
Jean B. Grossman, Princeton University/MDRC

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37046.v2

Version V2 ()

  • V2 [2018-06-06]
  • V1 [2018-04-17] unpublished
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Summary

From 2012 through 2016, MDRC, a non-profit research organization, conducted an evaluation of the scale-up effort of Success for All PowerTeaching in middle-school math. PowerTeaching, a structured cooperative learning program, was designed to do just that. The study was funded by an Investing in Innovation (i3) fund from the U.S. Department of Education. The expansion of PowerTeaching through an i3 grant offers the education field a unique opportunity to learn what it takes to help teachers create cooperative learning environments in their classrooms.

The Success for All PowerTeaching scale-up evaluation examines the PowertTeaching implementation and how it impacts five school districts over a two-year period (the 2014-2015 school year through the 2015-2016 school year). It also considers the scale-up process itself - the methods employed and the extent to which the Success for All Foundation (SFAF), the organization that developed and provides technical assistance to schools operating the program, achieved its scale-up goals.

The ten data files included in this study contain a range of variable information gathered from student-level test scores, teacher and school principal surveys, school achievement snapshots, teacher logs, and scale-up initiative evaluations. Key variables include district IDs, teacher and principal IDs, baseline and outcome standardized test scores, structural and instructional processes, and records of teacher logs. Demographic variables for students include information on race, gender, special education, free/reduced lunch eligibility, ELL status, and age.

Citation

Grossman, Jean B. Evaluation of Success for All PowerTeaching in Middle School Grades, United States, 2012-2016. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2018-06-06. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37046.v2

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

District

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2012 -- 2016 (Fall Academic Year--Spring Academic Year)

Date of Collection

2014 -- 2016
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Study Purpose

The Success for All PowerTeaching scale-up evaluation examines PowertTeaching implementation and impacts in five school districts over a two-year period (the 2014-2015 school year through the 2015-2016 school year). It also considers the scale-up process itself -- the methods employed and the extent to which the Success for All Foundation (SFAF), the organization that developed and provides technical assistance to schools operating the program, achieved its scale-up goals.

Study Design

SFAF developed the PowerTeaching model used in the i3 scale-up evaluation based on over 25 years of extensive research and refinement of the model. The model aims to prepare students to meet the stringent demands of new state math standards, both the knowledge standards and the 21st-century skills standards, such as communication and collaboration. Its components are intended to provide teachers with the necessary tools to incorporate cooperative learning strategies into their instructional practices. In particular, the PT model requires that teachers place students in longstanding heterogeneous skill groups and provide them with structured opportunities to practice the three key elements of cooperative learning teams:

  • Team recognition -- students embrace team identity and care about the team's performance.
  • Equal opportunities for all students to help the team - all team members, no matter their ability, can contribute to the team goals by improving on their past performance.
  • Team interdependence - team success depends on each individual's learning, while an individual's grade depends only on his or her own performance

The recruitment for the evaluation occurred as part of the general outreach to schools, districts, and states for the i3 scale-up grant. Each school had to meet the following eligibility criteria: serve students in Grades 6 through 8, eligible for Title I status, willing to comply with the study's data request, and at least 75 percent of its teachers had to vote to adopt the PTi3 program.

To be recruited, scale-up schools had to serve a large fraction (more than 50 percent) of minority students or students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in Grades 6 through 8. Compared with the scale-up sample, the study schools had a similar proportion of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and were equally likely to be designated Title I schools.

Demographic data was collected in the Primary Student Sample Data file, and includes variable information on race, SPED status, ELL status, free/reduced lunch status, sex, and race.

Sample

The recruitment for the evaluation was conducted by the Success for All Foundation (SFAF) and occurred as part of the general outreach to schools, districts, and states for the i3 scale-up grant. Each school had to meet the following eligibility criteria: It had to serve students in Grades 6 through 81, it had to be eligible for Title I status, it had to be willing to comply with the study's data request, and at least 75 percent of its teachers had to vote to adopt the PTi3 program.

At the end of the recruitment phase, five school districts in four states agreed to participate in the study. The number of study schools provided by each district ranged between 4 and 24, producing a total sample of 58 schools. Of these 58 schools, 24 schools were Cohort 1 and 34 schools were in Cohort 2.

Universe

Schools in the United States that met the following eligibility criteria: serve students in Grades 6 through 8, eligible for Title I status, willing to comply with the study's data request, and at least 75 percent of its teachers voted to adopt the PTi3 program.

Unit(s) of Observation

School, Individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

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Original Release Date

2018-04-17

Version History

2018-06-06 This study is being updated from a minimally processed Beta release (v1) study to a Full Curation release (v2) study.

2018-04-17 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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Notes