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SRM Evaluation Group Current Projects

California Post-Secondary Education Commission Improving Teacher Quality - Teacher Based Reform (ITQ-TBAR)

  • The purpose of this evaluation is to document and assess the effects of teacher participation in the Closing the Achievement Gap (CAG) in Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS) Program. CAG for PLAS is a program designed to improve the quality of teachers and develop teacher leaders through intensive professional development (PD) activities provided by Professional Learning Partners. The program is designed in such a way as to foster the creation of sustainable Professional Learning Communities and involves UCLA’s Center X Professional Learning Partners. Due to the complex nature of schools and school structures, quantitative and qualitative research methods will be used. Particular care will be taken to obtain rich descriptions of the nature of professional development activities and their direct effects on teachers. A quasi-experimental design will be used to isolate and capture the personal, professional, and academic effects of program activities on both teachers and students.

Improving Teacher Quality - Teacher-Initiated Inquiry Project (ITQ-TIIP)

  • The TIIP Program is a statewide initiative that was developed with the intention of fostering bottom-up school reform by encouraging organic formation of collaborative teacher teams that will design their own professional development program. Team members will be asked to keep a portfolio, detailing their own personal professional development and the activities in which they engage. The evaluation of the TIIP Program involves systematic collection of detailed information on characteristics and interactions of all participants in it. Additionally, portfolios will aid in describing the TIIP Program and preparing teacher teams for extensive sharing of program experiences and dissemination of findings.

Long Beach Unified School District Small Learning Communities - Grant 1 (2005-2010)

  • Amongst the many education reform efforts being implemented across the United States, one that is occurring in many large comprehensive high schools is the implementation of small learning communities. To evaluate the Small Learning Community Initiative in Long Beach high schools, LBUSD contracted with UCLA’s Social Research Methodology Evaluation Group (SRM Evaluation Group) to conduct a 5-year formative, implementation evaluation at Cabrillo, Jordan, and Polytechnic High Schools. Throughout the course of evaluation, data will be collected in five general areas: SLC development and implementation; personalization; equity and access; student achievement; and school/community collaboration. Multiple methods, including surveys, interviews, and observations, will be used to gather data from numerous sources, including teachers, administrators, students and parents.

Small Learning Communities - Grant 2 (2007-2012)

  • This particular grant was funded to implement academic reform through the use of the Small Learning Communities (SLCs) structure operating within both Lakewood and Millikan High Schools in the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD). SLCs are geared towards raising student achievement through the personalization of education by developing foundations and processes that encourage deeper and more meaningful relationships among teachers, between teachers and students, as well as among students themselves. SLCs at Lakewood and Millikan High Schools were initially developed under a previous federal grant in from 2003 to 2007. They were asked to engage in a 3-year implementation evaluation as a means to enhance and continue making gains through this model.

UCLA Academic Preparation & Educational Partnerships (APEP)

  • UCLA’s APEP consortium consists of 36 programs that work with students and schools in traditionally underserved areas to enhance student preparation for admittance to a four-year university. Activities include high school exit exam (CAHSEE) preparation, completion of UC and CSU A-G eligibility required courses, taking prescribed tests to achieve UC and CSU eligibility, and high school graduation. The SRM Evaluation Group assists individual programs with evaluation-related activities such as grant proposal writing, instrument development, data analysis, and database development. The Group also leads program evaluation workshops on specialized topics to build evaluation capacity. Topics have included logic modeling, using data to answer evaluation questions, and how to evaluate collaborative partnerships.

University of California Educational Evaluation Center (UCEC-UCLA)

  • The UCEC is an intercampus consortium that is interested in contributing to the knowledge base of effective educational policies and practices at all points in the education pipeline. Its primary goal is to improve data use and decision-making through the conduct of useful and rigorous evaluation. To accomplish this task, the UCEC utilizes system-wide expertise of nationally-recognized scholars to address educational problems, examine potential solutions, and provide evaluation capacity building. Similar to its work with APEP, the SRM Evaluation Group also leads efforts in evaluation capacity building as part of its participation in and contribution to the UCEC. These activities are open to educational centers on the UCLA campus.