What Does it Mean?

The outcome measure is student score on a standardized test. A norm-referenced test. That means that the test scores can be compared from year to year to get a sense of how much a student has learned. There is no "ceiling" on the score, so there is always growth.

In my case, I am really interested in the month-by-month rate of growth in achievement, and how much specific kinds of teaching might influence that growth. So these equations include terms to test different kinds of instruction.

In addition, there are terms that account for "balance" between kids who get the instruction and kids who don't. That way this mimics a true experiment. Think of medicine, where some people get the real drug and some get a placebo. The study is randomized, or people are matched on characteristics, so researchers can look for how the drug works by comparing to people without the drug. That's what I did statistically....create a kind of "matched" set of students who got it and didn't.

My head hurts just thinking about it. Six days to go.