2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference
2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference
2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference
2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference
2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference
2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference
2012 PREPS/MAPE Post Conference

Research & Evaluation Services

Experience

PREPS' reputation for research and evaluation of educational programs dates back to its inception in 1976, and PREPS was actively involved with the development and implementation of Mississippi's Education Reform Act of 1982. For the decade following the Reform Act, research and evaluation remained the primary focus for PREPS. The school improvement wave focusing on accountability in the mid 1990s prompted PREPS to have a broader role of service to Mississippi school districts by developing, coordinating, and conducting effective professional development. Many of these professional development opportunities are currently provided free of charge to PREPS member districts and strengthen awareness of the important links among curriculum, instruction, assessment, and accountability. By staying involved and informed with educational initiatives and policy, PREPS believes that we are more strategically poised to conduct relevant, meaningful research and evaluation for local school districts, state policymakers including the Mississippi Department of Education, and various other organizations including community service organizations, business, and industry.

Current Evaluations Projects

Over the course of all evaluation projects, PREPS conducts an extensive evaluation of the project activities and the progress of the programs toward meeting the proposed goals and objectives. Both qualitative and quantitative data is generally collected, analyzed, and triangulated in order to provide a clear picture of the successes and weaknesses of each project. Regular meetings and dialogue between the evaluation staff and the project staff result in recommendations and programmatic decisions that drive the project and the actions toward improving the efficacy of the project.

Transition to Teaching

Teach Jackson

PREPS is currently working with Jackson Public Schools (JPS) to evaluation their Teach Jackson project. This Transition to Teaching project supports the recruitment and retention of highly qualified mid-career professionals, including qualified paraprofessionals, and recent college graduates who have not majored in education to teach in one of Jackson's high-need schools through enhanced alternative routes to certification.

This five-year grant was funded to develop and implement comprehensive approaches to train, place, and support teacher candidates who were recruited into their program, which must meet relevant State certification or licensing requirements. JPS then works to ensure that program participants are placed to teach in high-need schools and districts and support candidates to serve in these placements for at least three years.

21st Century Community Learning Centers

ASSETS I and II

The Starkville School District, located in Oktibbeha County and serving over 4000 students, established a 21st Century Community Learning Center for four Title I schools. More than 500 at-risk, underperforming students in grades 4-12 are served at 4 school sites and at the Emerson Family School. ASSETS I (After School & Summer Equal Total Success), is based on the SSD goals to focus on decreasing the disproportionate number of students in Special Education and decreasing the high school dropout rate. Key components of Project ASSETS include the "5 F's": Foundation-Academic Support, Fun-Academic Enrichment, Fitness- Physical Health and Wellness, Future- Career Development, Family-Family Development. ASSETS II opened two additional 21st CCLC sites. It also established a homework helpline to serve academically at- risk students in Starkville/Oktibbeha County. One site serves approximately 200 students. The second site serves 125 children ages 6 to 17 in an after school/summer program. Homework Helpline services provides academic and homework support in the evening hours via telephone for 6th - 12Ih grade students. The SSD 21st CCLC program is designed to concentrate on state-wide and school-district goals to decrease dropout rate thus to increase the probability of students graduating from high school and reducing the number of students needing special education services.

Teaching American History

Mississippi Liberty Fellowship

School districts across Mississippi have collaborated on Mississippi Liberty Fellowship project (Corinth School District serves as the fiscal agent), a history consortium of over 37,000 students. The Mississippi Liberty Fellowship project serves 90 elementary, middle, and high school teachers (30 per year) over the 36-month grant period. The goal is to increase teacher knowledge of and appreciation for American history, resulting in improved academic achievement in students. The Corinth School District will serve as the project LEA in collaboration with 16 other districts.

The Mississippi Liberty Project is effectively supported by its partners, including Mississippi State University, University of Southern Mississippi, American Institute for History Education, Anodyne Professional Development Services, Bill of Rights Institute, Northeast Mississippi Museum, National Park Service Shiloh and Corinth units, and the Siege and Battle Commission of Corinth. These partners provide 6 days of colloquia during the school year and 5 days during the summer, emphasizing historical content and teaching strategies with leading historians, pedagogy experts, and master teachers.

The project provides ongoing opportunities for teachers to interact with history experts, and teacher-leaders developed during training sessions will disseminate the benefits of the project throughout the consortium. Sustainability is ensured by the perpetual access to professional development resources. A quasi-experimental evaluation will contribute research results to the field.

Math and Science Partnership Projects

Institutes for Chemistry and Physics (I-CaP)

The University of Tennessee at Martin's (UT Martin) Institutes for Chemistry and Physics (ICaP) will be a partnership including the College of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences with three school systems (two high priority) in West Tennessee. ICaP will be a 3-year series of 2-week summer institutes, with supporting online and on-site follow-up for science teachers. Over the 3-year period, a potential total of 60 teachers, from grades 5-9, will receive instruction from two science faculty and one education faculty member, using laboratories, computers, and the library on the UT Martin campus. In addition, participants will experience available resources at the Reelfoot Lake Research and Teaching Center. An anticipated outcome of ICaP over the three-year period will include 240 instructional units aligned with the new state science standards. Participants will receive teaching kits and will participate in a follow-up content workshop at the annual Tennessee Science Teachers Association (TSTA) meeting. ICaP will offer rigorous Physical Science content knowledge, modeling guided inquiry instructional methods, designed to address the new curriculum standards for science. A major benefit of ICaP is creating a continuous knowledge channel to enhance and sustain student interest in science between the middle school and the high school grade levels. While all ICaP participants must complete follow-up activities, some may elect to submit additional assignments to earn graduate credit in science.

Enhancing K-12 Science and Mathematics Preparation

Mississippi State University's Center for Science, Mathematics, and Technology (CSMT) and the College of Education (COE) have partnered in a project that will provide training for pre-service and in-service teachers in science and mathematics to utilize advanced technology in delivery of instruction and integrate workplace applications, skills and values into the curriculum and will develop a model that can be incorporated into the College of Education's teacher preparation curriculum to bridge the workforce gap between K-12 schools and manufacturing industries in Mississippi. PREPS will serve as the evaluator for this project.

The goals of the project are to:

Early Childhood Projects

Leaders in Literacy

Mississippi State University's Early Childhood Institute (ECI) was awarded funds for the Leaders in Literacy project through the Barksdale Institute. The lessons learned from the first phase of Leaders in Literacy are many. During the five years of Phase I, child care sites in West Point, Greenville, Jackson, and Meridian were utilized to learn more about (a) the affects of varying intensity levels of onsite technical assistance on improving literacy instruction skills of participating teachers and on enhancing the classroom learning environment, and (b) the degree to which the teacher's improved literacy instruction had an effect on child outcomes related primarily to language development. The focus of the model was to enhance teaching strategies to promote the preliteracy skills necessary for preschool children to become successful readers before or upon entry into first grade. This focus was accomplished by assessing the learning environment to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses, providing literacy skills development materials to the classroom, developing and implementing an action plan to address identified weakness areas, and providing specific onsite technical assistance to the teacher through modeling instructional strategies specific to the development of early literacy skills in preschool children.

Mississippi Delta Early Learning Initiative

The overall goal of the comprehensive initiative is to strategically implement research-based components at critical points in a child's educational development to promote an increase in on-time graduations from high school leading to self sufficiency and improved economic development of the Delta region. This scope of service will define the roles of the collaboration between the Mississippi Child Care Resource and Referral (MSCCR&R) Network, the Nurturing Homes Initiative (NHI), and the Early Childhood Institute (ECI), all of which are housed at Mississippi State University. Through this collaborative effort, a maximum amount of research-based, high-quality services will be provided to early care and education providers and parents of young children in the Mississippi Delta.

In year 1, PREPS will provide evaluation services to include development of variable identification, data collection methodology, and templates for collection in addition to yearly evaluation service activities and reporting. Evaluation activities in years 2-5 are to include, but are not limited to, measurement of fidelity (implementation) and program outcomes.