Edvantia can help you design and deliver effective support for low-performing schools and districts. Tap into our expertise with school and district improvement. Whether we work with you at the school, district, or state level, our staff collaborates with yours—and uses your data—to ensure coordinated and cohesive delivery of services. Learn more about what Edvantia offers.

Policy Forum Moderated by Edvantia CEO Check the Podcast and Ed Week Article Dr. Doris Redfield moderated “Using Evidence for a Change—The Federal Role in Education: Innovator or Regulator” in Washington, DC last month. The forum was sponsored by the Association of American Publishers, the Knowledge Alliance, and the Software & Information Industry Association. Read about it or watch the podcast here. Research Corner: Motivation and Reading How does student motivation affect the development of reading skills? What can teachers do to tap into students' motivation to read? For insights from research, see Edvantia’s Research Corner in District Administration magazine. Put Edvantia’s 40+ Years of Experience to Work for Your Schools Get instant access to resources you can use right away—and brief descriptions of Edvantia’s recent work—in the 2007 Edvantia Highlights report. To talk about ways we might partner with your state or district team to write a winning proposal, contact Kimberly Hambrick at 800.624.9120, ext 5446 or Kimberly.Hambrick@edvantia.org.

Rural Special Ed Conference in Charleston, WV The American Council on Rural Special Education will hold its annual conference right down the street from Edvantia headquarters on March 12-15. Planning to attend? Give us a call. On our staff are a former director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools (Pat Hammer) and rural scholar Caitlin Howley, who would love to have lunch with you and “talk rural.” Ready-to-Use Info Briefs for Parents West Virginia Parent Connections at Edvantia offers free information briefs you can use to help parents understand what schools must do if they don’t meet standards, what West Virginia School Report Cards say about student and school performance, and other NCLB issues. Read them, print them, or save a copy to your computer. Time to Order Family Connections for Next Year! Pre-K and K-1 teachers use Edvantia’s popular take-home learning guides to help families be involved more effectively in their children’s education. Inexpensive and ready to use, the guides include reading and math activities, messages for parents, and read-alouds. View the teachers guide and sample issues in our online store.

Jargon Decoder: Effect Size Effect size is a statistical measure indicating the practical meaningfulness of a finding. The interpretation of an effect size statistic depends on what is being measured, how it is being measured, and how large a change needs to be for the intervention to be considered effective. When comparing two groups, such as a group that received an intervention compared to a group that did not, an effect size of +0.50 is moderate and anything greater than +0.80 is strong. The effect size measure will tell you the extent to which the range of scores in two groups overlap with one another; the more overlap, the less difference there really is between groups, even if the mean scores suggest a "statistically significant" difference. Other measures of effect size are used when examining the relationship between an outcome score and a set of measures you think should affect that outcome score. Effect size measures are used in all types of quantitative research, including experimental and quasi-experimental efficacy studies, which Edvantia conducts for clients in both government and private sectors. Learn more about our research and evaluation services.

New Online: Highlights for High School Don’t miss MIT’s free, online course materials for K-12 teachers and students. Especially robust is its new Highlights for High School Web site, featuring video of MIT’s Solar Decathlon, a chance to watch a bullet smashing through a rose dipped in nitrogen, and hands-on learning ideas.

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