IES Blog

By Lauren Musu-Gillette

The physical condition of school facilities is an important element of the school experience in the United States. To ensure that school facilities provide optimal conditions for learning, districts may need to build new facilities or upgrade existing facilities. During the first decade of the 21st century, public school systems in the United States spent, on average, over $20 billion annually on school construction (Baker and Bernstein 2012).[i] A recently released NCES report examined changes in school facilities in the U.S. from 1998-99 to 2012-13.

How did the average age of schools’ main instructional buildings change from 1998-99 to 2012-13?

In school year 2012-13, schools’ main instructional buildings were 19 years old, which was older than the average age of 16 years in the 1998-99 school year.[ii] In addition, on average, large schools were newer than small schools (by 8 years) and medium-sized schools (by 5 years) in 2012-13.

How did dissatisfaction with schools’ environmental factors change from 1998-99 to 2012-13?

In the 1998-99 school year, ventilation was the factor rated as unsatisfactory for the highest percentage of public schools while lighting was the lowest. However, by the 2012-13 school year, the percentage of public schools for which ventilation was rated as unsatisfactory had dropped, and the percentage for lighting increased. In fact, lighting was the only environmental factor that was rated as unsatisfactory for a higher percentage of public schools in 2012-13 than in 1998-99.

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, Changes in America’s Public School Facilities: From School Year 1998-99 to School Year 2012-13

Was there a difference in the percentage of schools that needed money for repairs, renovations, and modernizations from 1998-99 to 2012-13? What was the estimated cost of these projects?

The percentage of public schools that needed money for repairs, renovations, and modernizations to put onsite buildings in good overall condition was lower in 2012-13 than 1998-99 by 23 percentage points (53 vs. 76 percent). However, the average cost of these projects was estimated to be $1.4 million more per school in 2012–13 than in 1998–99, adjusting for inflation.

Was there a difference in the percentage of schools with plans for building improvements in the next 2 years from 1998-99 to 2012-13?

A lower percentage of public schools in the 2012–13 school year had plans for building improvements in the next 2 years, compared to 1998-99 (39 vs. 48 percent). However, approximately 39 percent of public schools in the 2012–13 school year had plans for major repairs, renovations, or replacements to at least one building feature in the next 2 years.

In October, the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Early Childhood (DEC) honored recipients of the DEC Awards at their Annual International Conference on Young Children with Special Needs and Their Families. These awards are conferred upon individuals who are making a difference in the lives of young children with disabilities and their families. A number of NCSER-funded Principal Investigators (PIs) were among those honored by the DEC.

Kathleen Hebbeler (left) was one of two recipients of the Mary McEvoy Service to the Field Award, which recognizes an individual who has made significant national or international contributions to the field of early childhood special education. Dr. Hebbeler, of SRI International, has served as the PI on two NCSER-funded awards. She explored participation in and characteristics of early intervention services that predict child outcomes in kindergarten using data from the National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study. She also examined the reliability and validity of the Child Outcomes Summary Form, a tool used by many states in reporting annual child progress for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) preschool programs.

Karin Lifter (center) was the recipient of the Merle B. Karnes Award for Service to the Division for Early Childhood. This award recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to DEC in areas of leadership, service, research, advocacy, or publications. With NCSER funding, Dr. Lifter, of Northeastern University, has been validating the Developmental Play Assessment, an instrument designed to generate a profile of a child’s skills in play for progress monitoring and instructional planning. 

Michaelene M. Ostrosky (right) was awarded the DEC Award for Mentoring, an honor that recognizes an individual who has provided significant guidance to the development of students and/or new practitioners in the field. This award highlights the importance of training and guiding the next generation of leaders in the field. Dr. Ostrosky, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, served as PI on a project to evaluate the efficacy of Special Friends, a class-wide kindergarten program designed to improve the social outcomes of children with disabilities. She is currently serving as co-PI on a project that is developing a class-wide motor skills intervention for preschool children with developmental disabilities, called CHildren in Action: Motor Program for PreschoolerS (CHAMPPS).

Written by Amy Sussman, program officer, NCSER and Wendy Wei, program assistant, NCSER/NCER

Replication research may not grab the headlines, but reproducing findings from previous studies is critical for advancing scientific knowledge. Some have raised concerns about whether we conduct a sufficient number of replication studies. This concern has drawn increased attention from scholars in a variety of fields, including special education.

Several special education researchers explored this issue in a recent Special Series on Replication Research in Special Education in the journal, Remedial and Special Education. The articles describe replication concepts and issues, systematically review the state of replication research in special education, and provide recommendations for the field. One finding is that there may be more replication studies than it seems—but authors don’t call them replications.

Contributors to the special issue include Bryan Cook from the University of Hawaii, Michael Coyne from the University of Connecticut, and Bill Therrien from the University of Virginia, who served as guest editors, and Chris Lemons, from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. They shared more about the special issue and their collective insights into replications in special education research.

(In photo array, top left going clockwise: Therrien, Lemons, Coyne, and Cook)

How did you become interested in replication work?

Replication is a core component of the scientific method. Despite this basic fact that we all learned in Research 101, it is pretty apparent that in practice, replication is often ignored. We noticed how much attention the lack of replication was starting to get in other fields and in the press and were particularly alarmed by recent work showing that replications often fail to reproduce original findings. This made us curious about the state and nature of replication in the field of special education.

What is the state of replication research in special education?

It depends on how you define replication and how you search for replication articles. When a narrow definition is used and you require the term “replication” to be in the article, the rate of replication doesn’t look too good. Using this method, Lemons et al. (2016) and Makel et al. (2016) reported that the rate of replication in special education is between 0.4 to 0.5%, meaning that out of all the articles published in our field, less than 1% are replications. We suspected that—for a number of reasons (e.g., perceptions that replications are difficult to publish, are less prestigious than novel studies, and are hostile attempts to disprove a colleague’s work)—researchers might be conducting replication studies but not referring to them as such. And, indeed it’s a different story when you use a broad definition and you do not require the term replication to be in the article. Cook et al. (2016) found that out of 83 intervention studies published in six non-categorical special education journals from 2013-2014, there were 26 (31%) that could be considered replications, though few authors described their studies that way. Therrien et al. (2016) selected eight intervention studies from 1999-2001 and determined whether subsequently published studies that cited the original investigations had replicated them. They found that six of the eight original studies had been replicated by a total of 39 different studies (though few of the replications identified themselves as such).

What were some other key findings across the review articles?

Additional findings indicated that: (a) most replications conducted in special education are conceptual (i.e., some aspects are the same as the original study, but some are different) as opposed to direct (i.e., as similar to the original study as possible), (b) the findings of the majority of replications in special education agreed with the findings of the original studies, and (c) most replications in the field are conducted by one or more authors involved in the original studies. In three of the four reviews, we found it was more likely for a replication to produce the same outcome if there was author overlap between the original and replication studies. This may be due to the challenges of replicating a study with the somewhat limited information provided in a manuscript. It also emphasizes the importance of having more than one research team independently replicate study findings.  

What are your recommendations for the field around replicating special education interventions?

The article by Coyne et al. (2016) describes initial recommendations for how to conceptualize and carry out replication research in a way that contributes to the evidence about effective practices for students with disabilities and the conditions under which they are more or less effective:

• Many studies evaluate an approach that has previously been studied under different conditions. In this case, researchers should specify which aspects replicate previous research;
• Conceptualize and report intervention research within a framework of systematic replications, or a continuum of conceptual replications ranging from those that are more closely aligned to the original study to those that are less aligned;
• Design and conduct closely aligned replications that duplicate, as faithfully as possible, the features of previous studies.
• Design and conduct less closely aligned replications that intentionally vary essential components of earlier studies (e.g., participants, setting, intervention features, outcome measures, and analyses); and
• Interpret findings using a variety of methods, including statistical significance, directions of effects, and effect sizes. We also encourage the use of meta-analytic aggregation of effects across studies.

One example of a high-quality replication study is by Doabler et al. The authors conducted a closely aligned replication study of a Tier 2 kindergarten math intervention. In the design of their IES-funded project, the authors planned a priori to conduct a replication study that would vary on several dimensions, including geographical location, participant characteristics, and instructional context. We believe this is a nice model of designing, conducting, and reporting a replication study.

Ultimately, we need to conduct more replication studies, we need to call them replications, we need to better describe how they are alike and different from the original study, and we need to strive for replication by researchers not involved in the original study. It is this type of work that may increase the impact research has on practice, because it strengthens our understanding of whether, when, and where an intervention works.

By Katie Taylor, Program Officer, National Center for Special Education Research

By the National Forum on Education Statistics’ Data Visualization Working Group

Every day, 2.5 quintillion—that’s 17 more zeroes—bytes of data are uploaded to the Internet (IBM 2016).[i] How can people be expected to discern meaning when the volume of available data continues to grow at such a pace?  The short answer is that they can’t—someone needs to highlight the most relevant “take-home” message in the data or no one will see it, understand it, or use it to make decisions. 

Anyone who works in the field of education knows this reality. Federal, state, and local agency staff often struggle to effectively present data to stakeholders in an accessible, accurate, and actionable manner. Although data visualization websites and textbooks are readily available, they are often written for specialists in information architecture or graphic designers. Fortunately, the National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) has produced the new Forum Guide to Data Visualization: A Resource for Education Agencies, which is customized to meet the specific visualization needs of the education data and research communities. The intended audience is professionals who interpret and communicate data meaning for a wide range of education stakeholders, including practitioners, policymakers, researchers, parents, and the general public.

Building off of expertise in the field of data visualization, the guide presents a host of practices that support four overarching “take-home” principles for data visualization:

1. Show the data;
2. Reduce the clutter;
3. Integrate text and images; and
4. Portray data meaning accurately and ethically.

Other practical recommendations include:

• Capitalize on consistency—establish and adhere to common conventions;
• Avoid presenting figures side by side if the data are not intended to be compared;
• Consider your design choices beyond default graphing programs;
• Focus on the take-home message for the target audience;
• Minimize the use of jargon, acronyms, and technical terms;
• Choose a font that is easy to read and will reproduce well; and
• Recognize the importance of color and the benefits of Section 508 Compliance.

Because communicating data effectively is a priority in education agencies, the document also explains how the data visualization process can be implemented throughout an organization. In this way, effective visual communication might become the norm rather than exception in our agencies.  Visit the Forum’s website for more information about this guide, the Forum, and other free resources for the education data community.

About the National Forum on Education Statistics

The work of the National Forum on Education Statistics is a key aspect of the National Cooperative Education Statistics System. The Cooperative System was established to produce and maintain, with the cooperation of the states, comparable and uniform education information and data that are useful for policymaking at the federal, state, and local levels. To assist in meeting this goal, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, established the Forum to improve the collection, reporting, and use of elementary and secondary education statistics.

The information and opinions published in Forum products do not necessarily represent the policies or views of the U.S. Department of Education, IES, or NCES. For more information about the Forum, please contact Ghedam Bairu

Although traditional pencil and paper tests provide good information for many purposes, technology presents the opportunity to assess students on tasks that better elicit the real world skills called for by college and career standards. IES supports a number of researchers and developers who are using technology to develop better assessments through grants as well as the Small Business Innovation Research program. 

One example of the power of technology to support innovative assessment  is the Global, Integrated, Scenario-based Assessment (known as ‘GISA’), developed by John Sabatini and Tenaha O’Reilly at the Educational Testing Service as part of a grant supported by the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative.

Each GISA scenario is structured to resemble a timely, real-world situation. For example, one scenario begins by explaining that the class has been asked to create a website on green schools. The student is assigned the task of working with several students (represented by computer avatars) to create the website. In working through the scenario, the student engages in activities that are scaffolded to support students in summarizing information, completing a graphic organizer, and collaborating to evaluate whether statements are facts or opinions. The scenario provides a measure of each student’s ability to learn from text through assessing his or her knowledge of green schools before and after completing the scenario. This scenario is available on the ETS website along with more information about the principles on which GISA was built.

Karen Douglas, of the National Center for Education Research, recently spoke to Dr. Sabatini and Dr. O’Reilly on the role of technology in creating GISA, what users think of it, and their plans for continuing to develop technology-based assessments.

How did the use of technology contribute to the design of GISA?

Technological delivery creates many opportunities over more traditional paper and pencil test designs. On the efficiency side of the argument, items and tasks can be delivered over the internet in a standardized way and there are obvious advantages for automated scoring. However, the real advantage has to do with both the control over test environment and what can be assessed. We can more effectively simulate the digital environments that students use in school, leisure and, later, in the workforce. GISA uses scenario-based assessment to deliver items and tasks. During a scenario-based assessment students are given a plausible reason for reading a collection of thematically related materials. The purpose defines what is important to focus on as students work towards a larger goal. The materials are diverse and may reflect different perspectives and quality of information.