Predictive modeling on university enrollment. A large Mid-Atlantic university needed analytical assistance to uncover factors affecting accepted students' decisions as to whether to enroll. The university's admitted pool was unusually "price-insensitive," meaning that the size of financial aid awards had surprisingly little connection to matriculation decisions. We have used logistic regression interaction analyses, among others, to search out "pockets of price sensitivity"--subgroups for whom the award mattered more and for whom the university would thus have more leverage in using aid to attract students. The university has contracted with us on multiple occasions to explore issues affecting undergraduate and graduate populations, students at risk of academic probation, and international students. The work has influenced a $45-million awarding process and has filled an important gap in this enrollment management operation.
Investigating faculty and staff qualifications. In 2005 a consortium of over 100 private schools needed to inventory the qualifications of several thousand employees. Results would be used to support a statewide staffing initiative. We worked with leadership to devise a systematic, highly defensible strategy for coding key information from roughly 2,000 program documents completed each year. These documents were not standardized; they were completed by several dozen school administrators using different reporting formats and guidelines. Extracting the relevant information required a nontrivial amount of subjective decision-making, which undercut the precision desired for this high-stakes evaluation. We compensated by creating a Monte Carlo simulation to model the ways in which 11 types of error might have biased the estimates obtained and to show how these estimates could accordingly be adjusted. As a result of this analysis the organization was able to present stakeholders, including the state legislature, with better-supported, more authoritative statements on a vital topic. The study helped enable many member schools to successfully negotiate with the state for better employee compensation.
Additional iterations of study. In the years since 2005 we've created annual reports both on qualifications and on retention/turnover. Our analyses have included original data graphics illustrating job movement patterns typifying employees with particular characteristics and circumstances. We have also expanded the use of simulations so as to investigate longitudinal changes in qualifications and retention, since conventional statistical tests would not apply. Results have been used by the central organization as well as by many of its member schools. For this association we have also designed studies and/or conducted analyses on demographic trends likely to affect enrollment and on outcomes for students in private as opposed to public special education programs.
Comparing student achievement in charter schools and conventional public schools. A Ph.D. researcher in education sought to evaluate the proliferation of charter schools by analyzing the state assessment scores of all the state's charter and conventional schools. An important goal was to control for socioeconomic status (SES) factors -- some at the school level, which is commonly done and sometimes sufficient, but also some at the individual student level. This task was highly complicated by the nature of charter school enrollments, with each school accepting children from as many as 20 different towns or regional districts. The work was also complicated by having different sets of student characteristics involved in each analysis, depending on grade level and subject.
We devised a complex process by which students' income levels would be estimated based on their home district, with each charter school and each conventional public district assigned SES covariates that were weighted composites of students' backgrounds. (We later found that our method matched one developed independently by a research unit of the State Department of Education.) In addition to helping with design and analysis for this study, we advised on manuscript editing and other aspects of the process, helping bring about a successful doctoral defense.
Investigating faculty and staff qualifications. In 2005 a consortium of over 100 private schools needed to inventory the qualifications of several thousand employees. Results would be used to support a statewide staffing initiative. We worked with leadership to devise a systematic, highly defensible strategy for coding key information from roughly 2,000 program documents completed each year. These documents were not standardized; they were completed by several dozen school administrators using different reporting formats and guidelines. Extracting the relevant information required a nontrivial amount of subjective decision-making, which undercut the precision desired for this high-stakes evaluation. We compensated by creating a Monte Carlo simulation to model the ways in which 11 types of error might have biased the estimates obtained and to show how these estimates could accordingly be adjusted. As a result of this analysis the organization was able to present stakeholders, including the state legislature, with better-supported, more authoritative statements on a vital topic. The study helped enable many member schools to successfully negotiate with the state for better employee compensation.
Additional iterations of study. In the years since 2005 we've created annual reports both on qualifications and on retention/turnover. Our analyses have included original data graphics illustrating job movement patterns typifying employees with particular characteristics and circumstances. We have also expanded the use of simulations so as to investigate longitudinal changes in qualifications and retention, since conventional statistical tests would not apply. Results have been used by the central organization as well as by many of its member schools. For this association we have also designed studies and/or conducted analyses on demographic trends likely to affect enrollment and on outcomes for students in private as opposed to public special education programs.
Comparing student achievement in charter schools and conventional public schools. A Ph.D. researcher in education sought to evaluate the proliferation of charter schools by analyzing the state assessment scores of all the state's charter and conventional schools. An important goal was to control for socioeconomic status (SES) factors -- some at the school level, which is commonly done and sometimes sufficient, but also some at the individual student level. This task was highly complicated by the nature of charter school enrollments, with each school accepting children from as many as 20 different towns or regional districts. The work was also complicated by having different sets of student characteristics involved in each analysis, depending on grade level and subject.
We devised a complex process by which students' income levels would be estimated based on their home district, with each charter school and each conventional public district assigned SES covariates that were weighted composites of students' backgrounds. (We later found that our method matched one developed independently by a research unit of the State Department of Education.) In addition to helping with design and analysis for this study, we advised on manuscript editing and other aspects of the process, helping bring about a successful doctoral defense.
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