Accelerating Literacy for Adolescents (ALFA) Lab Regression Discontinuity Evaluation

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Douglas Mac Iver, Johns Hopkins University; Marcia Davis, Johns Hopkins University; Martha Mac Iver, Johns Hopkins University; Xiaodong Zhang, ICF; Jason Schoeneberger, ICF; Samantha Spinney, ICF

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
ALFA Lab Data Documentation.docx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document	27.2 KB	04/19/2023 07:01:AM
alfa_icpsr.dat	text/plain	474.2 KB	05/02/2023 08:22:AM

Project Citation:

Mac Iver, Douglas, Davis, Marcia, Mac Iver, Martha, Zhang, Xiaodong, Schoeneberger, Jason, and Spinney, Samantha. Accelerating Literacy for Adolescents (ALFA) Lab Regression Discontinuity Evaluation. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-05-03. https://doi.org/10.3886/E190621V1

Project Description

Summary: Many students from neighborhoods of concentrated poverty enter high school with underdeveloped reading skills, and skill gaps can create widespread achievement and engagement problems for students in high school, as well as college and career. The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of ALFA (Accelerating Literacy for Adolescents) Lab, a one-semester extra-help small-group class that supports incoming 9th grade high school students who are poor readers. The evaluation project involved researchers using a regression discontinuity design to compare reading outcomes for three cohorts of students from schools across the United States who were just above or just below a test cutoff score used to assign students to the ALFA Lab. Researchers assessed students’ literacy outcomes at the beginning and the end of 9th grade, including the Star assessment for reading achievement and the Adaptive Reading Motivation Measure to assess student motivation to read.

Funding Sources: US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (R305A180154)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: quasi-experiment; regression discontinuity; literacy; high school; reading achievement

Geographic Coverage: New York, Connecticut, Louisiana, California, Alabama

Time Period(s): 7/1/2019 – 6/30/2022 (The 2019-20 through 2021-22 school years)

Collection Date(s): 7/1/2019 – 6/30/2022 (The 2019-20 through 2021-22 school year)

Universe: First-time 9th grade students who have been identified as 'poor readers' that could benefit from an extra-help course focused on literacy acquisition.

Data Type(s): administrative records data

Methodology

Sampling: A convenience sample of schools recruited to participate in the project yielded four different schools represented across the three cohorts. Two schools, in New York and California, were represented in all three cohorts. The schools in Alabama and Connecticut were represented only in cohort 3. Students from a school in Louisiana are tagged as Cohort 1 members, but were excluded from all analyses due to poor implementation and participation. Guidance for excluding these is also included in the uploaded content.
Ninth grade students in each school enrolling in the local grade 9 English course were identified for participation in the project.

Data Source: Data sources for the project included district administrative data representing student background characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, English Language Learner (ELL) status and Special Education (SWD) status), as well as semester of participation and withdrawal dates (from either school or the project).

Collection Mode(s): cognitive assessment test

Scales: Renaissance Star Reading™ assessment
Adaptive Reading Motivation Measure (ARMM) General Reading Motivation subscale, the Reading Engagement subscale, and the Reading Behavior subscale.

Individual ARMM items are also included with the data deposit.

Weights: Weights were estimated using the RDROBUST R package and are based on the identified bandwidth around the cut-score, separately for each outcome. These weights are not included in the supplied data and should be estimated within the RD analytic context.

Unit(s) of Observation: 9th grade students

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-05-03]

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