12-13-07 memo

From: Feldman, Amy [mailto:Amy.Feldman@ed.gov]
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:16 PM
To: Matsuoka, Karen Y.
Cc: Cole, Allison L.; Martinez, Rochelle W.; Dooling, Bridget C.; Garcia, Sandra
Subject: RE: 200709-1850-003, Early Literacy

Hi all,

Here are the responses to the final 2 issues and the final instruments with the correct IES statute cited. I apologize for the delay-I wanted some additional revisions made to the instruments.

Please let me know if I can get you anything else.

Amy

1.      Does Memphis City Schools understand the limited generalizability of the findings from the 38 schools as opposed to the entire district?  Any idea how they picked the first schools to receive the intervention so that we know what differences there may be between the 38 schools and the rest of the district?

Twenty-eight MCS preschool sites began implementing the OWL curriculum in 2005-2006 and therefore were excluded from the random assignment to study conditions.

Those original MCS preschool classrooms were/are funded primarily through Title 1/NCLB. The state will not share their funding decisions so we cannot say how they picked the first classrooms. However, the remaining classrooms in the district were given the OWL curriculum the next year and those are the only ones in the evaluation. These classrooms, participating in the study, are representative of MCS preschool classrooms established before the 2006-2007 school year as the district is extremely homogenous and the data they have provided on demographics and SES for the two groups show no significant statistical differences.

“T-tests were conducted to ascertain the existence of differences in ethnicity and in socio-economic status between the classrooms already implementing the OWL curriculum and those in the study. Results revealed no significant differences between the two populations.” There are no demographic differences between pre-eval and eval cohorts. All schools are urban disadvantaged settings attended by at risk African American students (97%).

 

2.      Does MCS require the social security number on the parent consent form?  If not, we need to remove it.

The part of the consent form requesting the social security number has been removed.  (See attached.)