July 2005 — SETDA
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A New Competitive Grant Model for Nevada
Each participating teacher was provided with a technology package, including a laptop computer, an LCD projector, and 12 months of high-speed Internet access at home. Teachers also received 45 contact hours of professional development supported by Web-based instruction.
The teachers worked in groups to develop a total of eight units, and each teacher selected four of the units to teach to their students over two semesters. Teachers gathered demographic data such as gender, ethnicity, special-education services, and qualification for free and reduced lunches. Teachers also built three assessments into each unit and entered the summative scores from these assessments into a database. The database grew to more than 125,000 data points. These data were submitted to the researchers with a randomized student number and no link to student names in order to preserve confidentiality. Parent permission was obtained before submitting any data including assessment scores.
The Results: Test Data
More than 3,200 students participated in the first year of the study. Results show that students who were taught science supported by technology scored significantly higher on the end of unit tests. When those results were broken out into student groups, results indicate that students in the technology group scored higher in every student category than their peers in the control group as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Students who were taught science supported by technology scored significantly higher on the end of unit tests than those in the control group.
Figure 2 shows a comparison of unit test scores and state Criterion Referenced Test (CRT) scores for eighth-grade science. This chart indicates a reduction in the achievement gaps on the unit tests for all student groups except American Indians. Negative numbers show how far below the mean a given student group performs compared to the mean for all students in the state. State CRT data are based on all eighth-graders in the state, and unit test data are based on the experimental group within the 3,200 Cohort I students only. Of particular interest is the group scoring above the mean on the unit test and well below the mean on the state CRT.
Figure 2: A comparison of unit test scores and state CRT scores for eighth-grade science reveals that there was a reduction in the achievement gaps on the unit tests for all student groups except American Indians.
The Results: Interviews
To further investigate the effects of technology integration on student achievement, the researchers employed an additional assessment strategy: one-on-one interviews. These interviews are one of the best methods for finding out what students know and understand. A 10-question interview protocol was developed for each unit, and teachers randomly selected three students from each class to participate in the interview process. A total of 404 students were interviewed with 49 percent selected from the control group and 51 percent from the technology group. While overall results were not significant, some very powerful results emerged when the data were disaggregated by student group.
