incentives memo

Memorandum US Department of Education

11/21/07 Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Evaluation

­­­­­­­­­­­­­

TO: Karen Matsuoka

Desk Officer

Office of Management and Budgets

FROM: Amy Feldman

Research Scientist

National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance

SUBJECT: Exemption request regarding control school incentives for study REL Midwest, 200706-1850-006: Improving Adolescent Literacy Across the Curriculum in High Schools.

This study is a 2-year evaluation. Unfortunately, the REL Midwest contract will expire before it would be possible to provide the intervention to the control group as an incentive, although this is what we would prefer to do. So, that being the case, we are requesting an exemption to the NCEE guidelines for cash payments to control schools.

 

In this study, we are again concerned about maintaining control school participation over the 2 years. We need them hold off for the 2 years and encourage them not to obtain another intervention in the meantime. We are hoping that an incentive to the control schools would be providing them with support to purchase another literacy intervention at the end of the evaluation period.

We are requesting $1000 per control school. While this would not be enough to actually purchase another intervention in full, we are hoping that it will help and be enough of an incentive to recruit and maintain participation.