An Exploratory Study of Relationship between Educational Reform Practices and Student Achievement in the Urban Systemic Intiatives

这项提案要求为一项小规模的探索性研究提供赠款，该研究旨在开发新的分析工具，以检验城市教育实践的系统性改革战略与学生成绩之间的关系。该提案中概述的研究建立在Westat在过去8年中为国家科学基金会(NSF)系统倡议(SI)计划所做的工作的基础上。具体地说，Westat建议收集趋势数据，这些数据可以用来描述在各种城市系统倡议项目下得到支持的活动的范围。Westat还计划进行案例研究和其他分析，以探索具体的教育改革实践与学生成绩之间的关系。具体地说，拟议的研究是对新兴的和可能具有变革性的研究思想的尝试，以及对既定研究主题的新方法的应用，即探索新的方法来评估教育改革与学生在问责评估方面的表现之间的联系。

This proposal requests grant funding for a small-scale, exploratory study designed to develop new analytic tools for examining the relationship between strategies for systemic reform of urban educational practices and student achievement. The research outlined in this proposal builds upon work that Westat has been performing for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Systemic Initiative (SI) programs over the past 8 years. Specifically, Westat proposes to collect trend data that can be used to characterize the range of activities that have received support under the various Urban Systemic Initiative projects. Westat also plans to conduct case studies and other analyses to explore the relationship between specific educational reform practices and student achievement. Specifically, the proposed research represents a venture into emerging and potentially transformative research ideas, as well as application of new approaches to an established research topic i.e., the exploration of new methods for assessing the link between educational reform and student performance on accountability assessments.