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Families looking to receive grants and loans for college must complete the FAFSA (Federal Application for Federal Student Aid), a particularly challenging document that requires detailed financial information from students and (often) their parents. To alleviate the burdens of completing this form the federal government passed the FAFSA Simplification Act, which shortened and simplified the form along a number of dimensions in order to smooth the process of aid applications and increase FAFSA submission and re-submission rates. Unfortunately, the rollout of the new “Better FAFSA” has been plagued by legal, technical, and logistical challenges, which has led to a significant decline in current submissions relative to prior years and is predicted to have lasting impacts on college enrollment. In this project, Oded Gurantz and Erik Whitfield use quantitative methods to provide an in-depth examination of how application rates have changed as a result of the Better FAFSA implementation, deeply identify the characteristics of which types of students and families have been most affected by the new FAFSA, use these findings to identify specific communities in California most harmed by the process in order to think about ameliorating potential negative impacts.

Elena Diaz-Bilello, Kaitlin Nath, and Catalina Henríquez are collaborating with the to provide technical assistance and evaluation of the Colorado Multi-Tiered System of Supports (COMTSS). COMTSS is a prevention-based framework designed to help districts establish systems for increasing academic and behavioral outcomes for all students. In this project, the CADRE team serves as a thought partner around outcome measures and program improvement and also fulfills the role of the external evaluator for the that funds the work.

Benjamin Shear, Elena Diaz-Bilello, Kaitlin Nath, and Erik Whitfield are working with members of the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) Accountability Unit in an on-going collaboration. This work provides technical assistance to CDE by investigating statistical and psychometric issues related to implementing the state school accountability system and monitoring educational opportunities for students in Colorado. Current topics include evaluating statistical methods for reporting data for small schools, how to weight different components factoring into school ratings, and understanding the language development of multilingual learners across Colorado.

Elena Diaz-Bilello and other team members at CADRE have embarked on a new multi-year partnership with Pueblo 60 to employ multi- and mixed-methods to evaluate a new district project-based learning (PBL) initiative focused on STREAM Education in an elementary, middle, and high school. Key goals for implementing this PBL/STREAM learning model include: using the Gold Standard PBL Model by the Buck Institute for Education to motivate and engage students in their own learning and building the capacity for teachers to grow their expertise in enacting authentic learning experiences for and with students.

A CADRE team (PI: Elena Diaz-Bilello; Advisor: Mimi Engel) is partnering with Adams 12 Five Star Schools and the School Transformation Network at the Colorado Department of Education to learn from district efforts to adopt and implement high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), particularly in lower performing schools. This mixed-methods study focuses on understanding district and school-level decision-making processes, implementation supports, and classroom practices that shape how HQIM are used to improve teaching and learning. The study also elevates the perspectives of teachers, school leaders, district staff, and students to document challenges and identify promising practices that can inform the work of other Transformation Network districts. Findings will help inform district- and state-level strategies to strengthen HQIM implementation and contribute to the broader field of research on the role of instructional materials in driving school improvement.

Elena Diaz-Bilello collaborates with the Hawai’i Department of Education, the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, and the Learning Policy Institute to support the enactment of performance assessments developed by Hawaiian classroom teachers as part of regular classroom teaching and learning. This multi-year pilot project employs a set of student-centered design principles to guide the development and enactment of these assessments, and to contribute to Nā Hopena Aʻo conditions in schools.

Beginning in the 2020-21 school year, CADRE has partnered with the Colorado Department of Education and several school districts to learn from and assist with ongoing efforts to use performance assessments and capstone projects to inform graduation readiness decisions. This project continues as the CADRE team (Elena Diaz-Bilello, Kaitlin Nath, Kaylee Thomas, and Nicolás Buchbinder) engages in thought-partnership and supportive mixed-methods work with a set of new sites (Aurora Public Schools and New Legacy Charter School) to inform their ongoing continuous improvement work in this topic area.

Derek Briggs, along with a team of graduate students including Nicolás Buchbinder and Kyla McClure, have been involved in a Research-Practice Partnership with assessment specialists from the organization Curriculum Associates on a project that is exploring innovations in the presentation and interpretation of student growth from large-scale educational assessments. The idea is to shift attention from growth interpretations that emphasize “points earned” to growth interpretations that focus on conceptual changes in student thinking, changes that can be characterized in concrete terms by the content of the assessment in the form of exemplar items. To this end the team has created and pilot tested prototypes for a dynamic growth reporting interface.

On behalf of the Colorado Department of Education’s (CDE) Health Education Services unit, Kaitlin Nath and Elena Diaz-Bilello are evaluating a four-year K-5 SEL pilot sponsored by the Colorado legislature. The SEL pilot provides funds to high-needs elementary schools to hire one or more School Health Professionals (SHP) to help manage the social-emotional, behavioral, and mental health supports offered to students. Evaluation results will identify areas in which this pilot has been effective in meeting legislative goals as well considerations for future legislation to target student social and emotional learning.