Research
Twenty-four studies reviewed by the WWC investigated the effects of Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor®Software on high school students. Two studies (Cabalo, Jaciw, & Vu, 2007; Campuzano et al., 2009) are randomized controlled trials that meet WWC evidence standards. Two studies (Shneyderman, 2001; Smith, 2001) are randomized controlled trials or quasi-experimental designs (QED) that meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. The remaining 20 studies do not meet either WWC evidence standards or eligibility screens.
Meets WWC evidence standards
Cabalo, Jaciw, and Vu (2007) randomly assigned 22 classrooms to receive either the Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor®Software Algebra I program or the standard curriculum. Eight teachers taught at least one intervention class, and nine teachers taught at least one comparison class, at one of five Maui School District schools or at Maui Community College. The analysis sample consisted of 182 intervention and 162 comparison students who had taken both the pretest (in fall 2005) and the posttest (in May 2006).
Campuzano et al. (2009) randomly assigned teachers in high-poverty schools to intervention and comparison groups as part of a national study of software products. During the second year of the study (presented in this report), Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor®Software was implemented in nine schools in four districts. Nine teachers were randomly assigned to use the Algebra intervention, and nine were assigned to the comparison condition and used traditional instructional methods, with a pair of intervention and comparison teachers in each school. The fall and spring tests were administered to 145 intervention and 131 comparison students in 8th and 9th grades.
Meets WWC evidence standards with reservations
Shneyderman (2001) conducted a quasi-experiment in six senior high schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that had a computer lab by October 2000. For each school, two teachers were randomly selected from all teachers using the Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor®Software Algebra I program. One class for each teacher was randomly selected into an intervention sample of 12 classrooms; the comparison sample was composed of 12 randomly selected nonintervention Algebra 1 classrooms in the same six schools. The analyses were conducted on 276 intervention and 382 comparison students in 9th and 10th grades.
Smith (2001) was a randomized controlled trial that was compromised by restrictions placed on the analysis sample after random assignment. Therefore, it was treated as a QED that demonstrated baseline equivalence of the analysis sample on a pretest and made the necessary statistical adjustments, allowing it to meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. The study involved all students in seven high schools in Virginia Beach City Public Schools who completed a three-semester Algebra I sequence during the 1999–2000 and 2000–01 school years. Students were randomly assigned to the sequence in which the math teacher was willing to implement the Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor®Software program (229 students) or the sequence with the traditional curriculum (216 students).
Extent of evidence
The WWC categorizes the extent of evidence in each domain as small or medium to large (see the WWC Procedures and Standards Handbook, Appendix G). The extent of evidence takes into account the number of studies and the total sample size across the studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations.6
The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor®Software to be medium to large for high school students.