A Pilot Study to Identify Comparison Schools for Math and Science Partnership Participating Schools: Preliminary Findings on One Math/Science Partnership.

This pilot study proposes a set of analytical steps for comparing schools that participate in the National Science Foundation's Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program and their nonparticipating peers in the same state. This pilot is part of a larger effort to evaluate the MSP Program's role in student achievement, with two companion analyses. Although our pilot study uses a comparative approach, the study by Dimitrov in this issue follows a within-group design. The third analysis by Yin and his associates in this issue covers the varied designs used by the MSPs themselves in their own evaluations. In this pilot, we focus on a sample of participating schools in one MSP in one state. The nonparticipating schools were carefully matched with the program participating schools on eight demographic variables to form a comparison group. This article offers detailed documentation on how we operationalize two matching methods for comparative purpose. We conclude that carefully executed matching methods are promising for large scale comparative analysis on the effects of the MSP Program across different states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]