10-15-07 memo

Memorandum US Department of Education

Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Evaluation

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TO: Karen Matsuoka

Desk Officer

Office of Management and Budgets

FROM: Amy Feldman

Research Scientist

National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance

SUBJECT: Exemption request regarding control school incentives for study REL Central 2.1a, Use of Classroom Assessment for Student Learning, 200706-1850-005.

This study is a 2-year evaluation estimated to begin this month. Unfortunately, the REL Central contract was one of the early ones to be awarded and therefore will expire before it would be possible to provide the intervention to the control group as an incentive, although this is what we would prefer to do. So, that being the case, we are requesting an exemption to the NCEE guidelines for cash payments to control schools.

 

In the case of this study, the CASL, we are particularly concerned about maintaining control school participation over the 2 years. The district where we’d like to conduct the study has alerted us that they are eager to have an intervention and they couldn’t promise without a large enough incentive that the schools who end up in the control group would hold off for 2 years. We have explored conducting the study in one of 2 other locations but it appears the samples may not be large enough and the characteristics appropriate enough for the target of this intervention so we’d like to stay where we originally planned geographically.

We are requesting $1000 per control for the length of the study (2 years).