Spring 2022 Newsletter
What’s New at the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation
Although the CADRE Newsletter went on something of a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, our team of researchers has remained active throughout.
CADRE Director recently completed a book he had been researching and writing over a five year period entitled (Routledge, 2021). Since 2020, he has been leading a project in collaboration with the organization Curriculum Associates with the goal of enacting improvements and refinements to the methods used to model and report information about student growth. The collaboration includes two CU graduate students ( and ) and a team of Curriculum Associates leadership and staff (Laurie Davis, Kristen Huff, Amanda Brice, Logan Rome and Dan Mix). They will be presenting the progress they have made on an approach they call “content-referenced growth” at both the NCME conference and CCSSO’s National Conference on Student Assessment. In this newsletter, Derek shares some insights motivated by his team’s work with Curriculum Associates on the topic of summer learning loss. Specifically, Derek illustrates how the statistical artifact of regression to the mean can lead to problematic policy recommendations about summer learning interventions.
Associate Director has kept the CADRE ship sailing along while also leading a number of projects with Colorado school districts and the Colorado Department of Education. In this newsletter Elena shares some insights from an ongoing project with Denver Public Schools that focuses on the evaluation of learning experiences for students in the Arts throughout the district.
Research Associate has been working with CADRE Faculty Affiliate along with collaborators at Northwestern University and University of California Davis on a “Sensemakers Project” to identify variations in teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and practices as they enact science curriculum designed to support the Next Generation Science Standards. In this newsletter, Jessica shares a reflection on the role that student identity and belonging play in helping students to think and act like scientists.
Faculty Partner has been involved with ongoing projects for the Colorado Department of Education’s Accountability and School & District Transformation Units. Ben has been actively involved in using Colorado test data to evaluate the effect of the pandemic on student learning. He has a recently completed manuscript that provides guidance and caveats to researchers using test data with the intent of drawing causal inferences that we look forward to sharing soon. In this newsletter, Ben calls attention to an important methodological issue that needs to be taken into consideration when tracking annual changes in student enrollment in K-12 public schools.
Finally, we want to highlight one in a long list of accomplishments for Faculty Partner, . Lorrie and co-authors Chris Saldaña and Scott Marion have a forthcoming chapter in the second volume of the AERA Handbook of Education Policy Research entitled, “Standards-Based Reform and School Accountability.” After spending many years leading and advising the Research and Evaluation Methodology (REM) program at the School of Education, Lorrie will be retiring from teaching at the end of this school year. She will, however, stay connected to us and we look forward to the continued guidance and wisdom she provides to CADRE, REM, and the larger School of Education and CU Boulder community.
Featured projects
Gain Scores and the Regression Fallacy
By Derek Briggs
In an article for Phi Delta Kappan entitled Rethinking summer slide: the more you gain, the more you lose” Kuhfeld (2019) uses NWEA MAP test data to show that students with the largest test score gain from fall to spring of an academic school year are those likely to have the largest score declines from spring to the fall of a subsequent school year...
Examining the Question of Access to Arts Programming
By Elena Diaz-Bilello
Much has been written about the importance of the Arts, particularly with respect to how exposure to arts programming can meet social emotional learning needs of students and enhance their well-being. For this reason, education researchers highlight the importance of providing access to these disciplinary areas and decry how the Arts tend to be the first areas to be cut at schools and districts facing budget constraints...
Considering Student Identity and Belonging
By Jessica Alzen
My current projects have me spending a lot of time in various classroom spaces. I recently used Zoom to observe in middle and high school science classrooms in Illinois and New Jersey. I spent one day in Cañon City, CO where I visited every classroom in an elementary school with a team of researchers, educators, and community members...
Measuring Public School Enrollment Changes During the COVID-19 Pandemic
By Benjamin Shear
The COVID-19 pandemic led to historic changes in public school enrollment in the US. There has been considerable interest in quantifying the magnitude of these changes, and in understanding their causes and consequences...
Conferences and NCME Presidential Address
All of us at CADRE have been busy this Spring preparing to share our work at , , and . We look forward to reconnecting with you at these annual conferences!
This year at NCME is especially important to us since CADRE’s Derek Briggs closes out his one year term as 2021-22 NCME President. We look forward to seeing many of our partners and colleagues at Derek’s NCME Presidential Address in San Diego on Saturday, April 23 at 4:40 p.m. (PT). For long-time NCME members please note the change in schedule, as the NCME Presidential Address will take place on Saturday evening, rather than at breakfast as in past years. The Presidential Address will take place in the California Ballroom at the Westin San Diego Gaslamp Quarter and will also be held as a hybrid event, so anyone who registers for the NCME conference can live-stream the event even if they aren’t in San Diego. For those attending the event in-person, please join us for the Presidential Reception that will follow the address at 6:30 p.m. (PT) at the Garden Terrace.