Page | 31 Research Questions Two primary research questions are posed to gather evidence supporting the seven primary ePectiveness claims centered around language proficiency: Question 1: First, we will examine the level of language skills growth achieved by both the intervention using Engage and the comparison group from the beginning to end of instruction: Do grade 9−12 students receiving instruction incorporating Engage (intervention group) achieve significant growth in language skills during approximately 32 weeks of instruction during a school year? What is the magnitude of the growth achieved? Question 2: Second, we will compare the language skills growth achieved by students receiving instruction incorporating Engage to the growth of students in the comparison group receiving instruction without Engage (business as usual): Do grade 9−12 students receiving instruction incorporating Engage (intervention group) achieve language skills growth greater than that achieved by the comparison group not receiving instruction incorporating Engage (comparison group)? Data Collection and Measurement SEG will use the district’s beginning- and end-of-year English language formative assessments as the primary measure for the study. The beginning-of-year assessment will be used for pretesting and the end-of-year assessment will be used for posttesting. Nearly all districts use a commercially developed, third-party formative assessment program to evaluate students at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Commonly used assessments for this purpose are iReady from Curriculum Associates and MAP from NWEA 2023. The data from the district formative assessment in language skills will be used as the outcome (posttest) measure as well as the pretest measure. The district(s) will be asked to prepare a data file for use by SEG. The file will contain all the grade 9−12 students enrolled in the district(s) including their beginning-of-year assessment results (pretest), the student’s grade level, gender, ethnicity, and an indication of whether the student was eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch, along with a unique student identifying number. At the end of instruction, the district will provide the end-of-year assessment data through a second data file or will merge the end-of-year data according to specifications provided by SEG.
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