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The statement is somewhat unclear, since LSC itself is a systemic program. But the questioner is correct that there are other factors beyond the direct professional development opportunities that projects are providing to teachers that can influence their instruction and the achievement of their students. What is needed are mechanisms for ruling out the possible effects of those other factors. If you are in a single district with little demographic variation among schools, most of those factors are not likely to vary a great deal from school to school or classroom to classroom. That is, most of the non-LSC systemic factors are likely to influence all participants pretty much equally. Therefore, although it would be difficult (if not impossible) to capture this information quantitatively, one could describe and discuss these factors qualitatively to provide a context within which to interpret one's student impact analyses. There are ways to do this using prior years' performance of similar groups as a comparison, if the district's data system can support them. Suggestions for doing so can be found in the section on control/comparison groups in the "Guidelines" document provided at the North Carolina workshop.
Joy Frechtling,
2/9/2001
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