As parents, practitioners, and policymakers focus on the path to progress in addressing critical issues in education, Mathematica is pleased to announce new studies to help light the way. For change agents tackling these urgent challenges, our experts provide thoughtful counsel along with the rigor and objectivity needed to see clearly and act quickly.
Highlights of our latest work include the following:
- Creating a seamless education system for a changing world. P-16 is the shorthand term for a student-focused, comprehensive, and integrated system that links preschool through postsecondary education to prepare students for living, learning, and working in a changing world. We’ve teamed with Equal Measure in a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study its P-16 Community Investment initiative to improve educational opportunity and equity so that all students develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to thrive as adults and contribute to their communities. This creative and flexible learning partnership will help the foundation learn from its investments so it can refine its strategy and approaches. We will review literature on systems change—broad institutional changes that bring about lasting results—and create a measurement framework to help understand high-functioning P-16 systems. Then we will evaluate grantee communities to generate evidence and guide future decision making.
- Exploring the potential of teacher leaders. Leadership in a school goes beyond the principal or the names on an org chart. Improving math and reading outcomes for students, particularly those in high-needs schools, depends on a school’s ability to attract and retain outstanding teachers and find ways to promote their effectiveness. One promising approach for doing so is to have high-performing teachers take on more responsibility and coach novice and low-performing teachers. The U.S. Department of Education awarded more than $88 million to 14 grantees through the Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program to implement various teacher leader models. To investigate the impacts of these models, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) partnered with Mathematica to conduct a five-year study of the potential benefits of teacher leaders. The study will examine the effects of teacher leaders on teacher and student outcomes such as teacher satisfaction, recruitment, and retention as well as student achievement.
- Developing practical, actionable resources for educators about what works. Instructional Research Group and Mathematica are partnering with IES to build on the success of the What Works Clearinghouse. This project will provide elementary and middle school practitioners with a guide containing evidence-based recommendations on how to use the response to intervention approach in mathematics.
- Adult education that works for the workforce. Strong literacy, numeracy, and English language skills are key to workforce success. Yet one in six adults—36 million Americans—lacks these skills, 25 million have no high school credential, and more than 122 million do not have an associate’s degree or higher. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act aims to better align adult education programs with the changing needs of the modern workforce. Mathematica was selected by IES to conduct the eight-year Assessing Evidence of Effectiveness in Adult Education study, which will look at the effectiveness of promising approaches to support adult learners. The study includes a systematic review of the evidence on interventions to support adult learners and up to two large-scale evaluations of promising approaches.
Learn more about how Mathematica helps our clients on their journey from inquiry to insight through data, analytics, evaluation, and evidence-based technical assistance.
