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In 2015, 26 two- and four-year institutions received grants to help implement and sustain reforms consistent with the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) reform approach. Beginning in 2015, the colleges worked to launch or enhance technologies and related structural and procedural changes that would enable them to provide holistic, long-term support to all students by 2018. CCRC is analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) of short- and long-term student outcomes at these institutions--including those measuring credits earned, GPA, progress in developmental and gateway courses, retention, and completion--to better understand progress made under the advising reforms. Recognizing an institution's baseline level of performance prior to implementing a reform is critical to determining the reform's effectiveness. This paper provides baseline KPIs for 22 of the 26 colleges that were awarded an iPASS grant. We examine trends in institutional outcomes in the years prior to the start of the iPASS grant period. Our data indicate that, prior to the start of their funded iPASS reforms, grantee colleges exhibited wide variation in KPIs across institutions. We also find that four-year institutions generally exhibited higher performance than two-year institutions. Finally, our analysis of multiple KPIs across a time period prior to the iPASS grant period establishes that outcomes on these measures remained relatively stable for several years across the institutions. This stability will allow us to better interpret changes in the KPIs that may occur after the reforms are fully implemented.

Reading Recovery is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child's literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the training of 3,675 new Reading Recovery teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding service to an additional 88,200 students. The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) was contracted to conduct an independent evaluation of the i3 scale-up of Reading Recovery over the course of five years. The evaluation includes parallel rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs for estimating program impacts, coupled with a large-scale mixed-methods study of program implementation. This report presents the findings of the second year of the evaluation. The primary goals of this evaluation are: (1) to provide experimental evidence of the impacts of Reading Recovery on student learning under this scale-up effort; (2) to assess the success of the scale-up in meeting the i3 grant's expansion goals; and (3) to document the implementation of the scale-up and fidelity to program standards. This document is the second in a series of three reports based on the external evaluation of the Reading Recovery i3 Scale-Up. The report represents results from the impact and implementation studies conducted over the 2012-2013 school year--the third year of the scale-up effort and the second full year of the evaluation. [This document is a reissue of the December 2014 CPRE Research Report RR-79 under the same title. For the Year One Report, see ED547669.]

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery (RR) teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child's literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the scale-up of Reading Recovery by training 3,675 new RR Teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding capacity to allow service to an additional 88,200 students. The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) was contracted to conduct an independent evaluation of the i3 scale up of Reading Recovery over the course of five years. The evaluation includes parallel rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs for estimating program impacts, coupled with a large-scale mixed-methods study of program implementation under the i3 scale-up. This report presents findings through the second year of the evaluation. The primary goals of this evaluation were: (1) to assess the success of the scale-up in meeting the i3 grant's expansion goals; (2) to document the implementation of scale-up and fidelity to program standards; and (3) to provide experimental evidence of the impacts of Reading Recovery on student learning under this scale-up effort. This document is the first in a series of three annual reports produced based on our external evaluation of the Reading Recovery i3 Scale-Up. This report presents early results from the experimental impact and implementation studies conducted over the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. An appendix includes: Statistical Model for Impacts of Reading Scores. [For "WWC Review of the Report 'Evaluation of the i3 Scale-up of Reading Recovery Year One Report, 2011-12.' What Works Clearinghouse Single Study Review," see ED547670.]

This paper asks how doctoral students understand the use of race variables in statistical modeling. More specifically, it examines how doctoral students at two universities are trained to define, operationalize, and analyze race variables. The authors interviewed students and instructors in addition to conducting a document analysis of their texts and syllabus. They interviewed six advanced doctoral students from each university who study education and have taken an advanced statistics course, defined as regression analysis, multi-level modeling, or other advanced courses. These students were randomly selected from the pool of doctoral students who have completed their course work. They interviewed three instructors from each university who teach advanced statistical methods. Again, the process for selection was random. They collected the syllabus and texts used by all interviewees in their advanced statistics courses. Using responses from the interview questions and short task the authors uncovered student voices on the prevalence and relevance of investigator perspective in race-related quantitative research personally and in terms of their training. In general, participants misinterpreted the output, employing causal language and incorrectly attributing characteristics to racial group membership. Participants also noted receiving very little, if any mention of the complexity of race as a social construct in their statistical training courses. Neither the syllabus nor the text used in these courses spent adequate space and time exploring the issues associated with using racial variables in statistical modeling.