Research Reports & Publications

John Cronin's presentation for the Michigan Assessment Summit: "Measuring and Modeling Growth in a High Stakes Environment"

John Cronin's presentation from the Maine Assessment Conference - Measuring and Modeling Growth in a High Stakes Environment

Data awards are designed to help graduate students and university researchers without project funding use our Growth Research Database (GRD) to further their research goals and projects.  The deadline for applications is December 1, 2011.

Karen Rambo received a data award from the Kingsbury Center to look at summer growth patterns and to assess the impact of schools on high achievers. Click the link below to read more about her research. 

John Cronin's presentation at the South Carolina Association of Title I Administrators Conference on Oct 24, 2011.

Kingsbury Center data award recipient James Woodworth is a distinguished doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas. Using data from the Growth Research Database, he analyzed the error variance produced by value added models using different assessments.  Click below to read the full research brief.

An update to a 2007 report on proficiency (The Proficiency Illusion), this study looks at differences in the difficulty of proficiency cut scores, by state, grade, and subject. (Executive Summary)

The Kingsbury Center is excited to introduce our new interactive Data Gallery - a place where visitors can explore the data that we use in our research and gain research-based insights on important education topics.  Each exhibit in the gallery includes a video overview of the topic, interactive data visualizations, and links to other studies and blog posts relevant to the topic.  There is also space for visitors to leave comments, ask questions, and share - please let us know your thoughts about the exhibits!  Go to http://kingsburycenter.org/gallery to visit the gallery!

As schools have expanded their use of growth measures, we see increasing pressure to use growth data for high-stakes purposes, such as performance evaluation and performance pay. This presentation introduces educators to the measurement questions and issues that must be addressed as schools consider moving into this area.

An update to a 2007 report on proficiency (The Proficiency Illusion), this study looks at differences in the difficulty of proficiency cut scores, by state, grade, and subject.

John Cronin's Powerpoint presentation from the Colorado Assessment Summit, June 13, 2011.  Measuring and modeling growth in a high-stakes environment: What every educator needs to know.

Student Data Report - Outcomes and Participation for Summer 2009 and Participation for Summer 2010

Measuring and Modeling Growth in a High Stakes Environment - John Cronin's  Indiana Assessment Summit Presentation, April 2011

Researchers from NWEA will present papers at several sessions of the joint annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) on April 8 - 12, 2011.

 To learn more about our presentations and sessions, click here.

NWEA presenters at AERA/NCME conferences in New Orleans, LA on April 8-12.

John Cronin's presentation for the March 17, 2011 South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA) meeting.

John Cronin's presentation for the Texas MAP Users Conference on February 24, 2011.

This study, conducted in partnership with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, examines the No Child Left Behind system and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) rules for 28 states. Thirty-six schools were studied to determine which of them would or would not make AYP when evaluated under each state's accountability rules. Based on this analysis, we can see how AYP varies across the country and evaluate the effectiveness of NCLB.

SCEPUR Keynote Presentation February 3, 2011

Jeff Marshall and Bob Horton from Clemson University’s Inquiry in Motion Institute are working with the Kingsbury Center on the evaluation component of a multi-year study examining the student learning impact of a Professional Development (PD) program for math and science teachers.  The project is off to an exciting start – Clemson has recently been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to accompany an existing grant from the state of South Carolina, and preliminary findings from the pilot indicate that students taught by teachers in the PD program are showing more growth in their NWEA MAP® scores than their peers.

As more schools are held accountable for current state educational accountability systems, many criticisms have been leveled at the inadequacy and inconsistency of status-based measures. This study helps to view school effectiveness as a measurement of growth instead of simple decisions regarding passing or failing at one-time point or even multi-time points. To further address the assertion that schools with a large proportion of academically disadvantaged students are usually evaluated and judged unfairly, this study takes into account school context and develops conditional school growth to make the “apples to apples” comparison possible.

John Cronin's presentation for Kentucky MAP Insitute on June 22, 2010.

John Cronin's presentation for Kentucky MAP Insitute on June 22, 2010.