July 2005 — SETDA
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Making a Difference One Student at a Time
Impact on Student Achievement
The eMINTS teachers are well-prepared, with ongoing, intensive professional development and on-site coaching over a two-year period. Also, teachers’ expectations in eMINTS classrooms are very high, and cooperative grouping is an integral part of the program. Students in eMINTS classrooms are actively engaged through project-based activities using higherorder thinking and questioning skills. Children’s cultures, communities, and interests are used as a starting point for most lessons. The eMINTS model is used in our after-school, Saturday, and summer school programs for students.
The pilot program’s efforts were assessed using a variety of approaches, including evaluating the overall program, the process of implementation, and the outcomes. The process of formative evaluation focused on determining the quality of an activity and how it could be improved. Through qualitative assessments such as surveys and interviews, the evaluators examined:
- The instructional model’s degree of implementation
- The quality of the professional development activities
- The nature and extent of parent and community involvement
- The effectiveness of the program’s coordination and communication
The outcome evaluation measured the program’s impact on participating schools and students. In addition, evaluators gathered data on student attendance, the number of behavioral referrals to the principals’ offices, as well as the level of parental involvement.
Remarkable formal assessment tools. The impact of the eMINTS program in both elementary schools was impressive. Teachers’ behaviors changed from a traditional role to a more constructivist role in the classroom. Teachers’ and students’ technology skills increased significantly. Student attendance in eMINTS classrooms increased. Behavioral referrals to the principal’s office decreased for students in the program. And parental involvement increased in these eMINTS classrooms.
The formal assessment tools of Missouri and the district highlighted impressive results: Student achievement scores in eMINTS classrooms significantly increased at both schools. The evaluators measured the program’s impact on student achievement by using a quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-testing. They selected a comparison group consisting of students with matched pretest scores randomly chosen from all students in the same grades not participating in the eMINTS program.
Measuring student outcomes. The results of TerraNova (www.ctb.com), a test designed to measure achievement in the basic skills taught in schools nationwide, and the Scholastic Reading Inventory (teacher.scholastic.com/products/sri), a computer-adaptive reading assessment and progress-monitoring tool for grades 1-12, have shown that the eMINTS program has had a positive impact on student outcomes. This is clearly revealed in the MAP’s results, which compare scores from prior years of students in communication arts and science in the third grade, and in math and social studies in the fourth grade. The table below represents the percentage of students in the “proficient” level of the MAP test.
