Co-Principal Investigator: Hilliard, Allie; Petscher, Yaacov

Partner Institutions: This project is a partnership between the Seminole County Public Schools (SCPS) and the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) at Florida State University. SCPS serves one of the most densely populated areas of Central Florida. The district has close to 68,000 students, and 37 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, and 9 high schools.

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to continue to build a partnership between SCPS and FCRR, and to begin to examine the effects of the Next Generation Content Area Reading Professional Development (CARPD) on the literacy outcomes of struggling high school students. The state of Florida requires districts to provide reading interventions to students who score the lowest on a statewide reading assessment, and SCPS began implementing CARPD to train teachers to infuse literacy strategies into the content area subject they teach. This partnership project will examine retrospective data to begin to examine the effects of CARPD on student outcomes. They will also plan for a future efficacy study of CARPD.

Partnership Activities: The partnership between the SCPS and FCRR began in 2004, and will continue to be developed in an effort to improve students' reading outcomes. Members from both SCPS and FCRR will work together on issues related to partnership, analysis, and dissemination. Teams will develop surveys, collect survey data from teachers and CARPD coaches, draft a report of findings, and develop plans for a future efficacy study of CARPD. Team members will meet via monthly conference calls and occasional face-to-face meetings.

Setting: The research will take place in the Seminole County Public Schools in Florida.

Population/Sample: The sample for the research will include approximately 16,412 students in grades 9–11. A subsample of 816 students who received instruction from a CARPD-trained teacher will be compared to students who did not receive such instruction.

Data Analytic Strategy: Research will involve a retrospective analysis of extant data on teacher CARPD participation and student achievement data. The research team will use propensity score matching and random effects mixed modeling to examine whether receiving instruction from CARPD-trained teachers is associated with improved reading outcomes.

Outcomes: At the end of this project, the partnership expects to have information on how CARPD was implemented, how teachers were assigned to receive CARPD training, and whether and how students were assigned to receive instruction from a CARPD-trained teacher. The partnership will also have developed plans for future efficacy testing of CARPD including understanding of student inclusion criteria and methods for measuring CARPD in the classroom. Finally, the partnership will produce a report of the findings and a report of partnership activities and lessons learned for dissemination to other researchers and practitioners who may be interested in doing partnership work.