School Choice in Indiana: An Examination of Impacts and the Conditions Under Which Choice is Effective

Co-PI R. Joseph Waddington, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation at the University of Kentucky. He will assist Project Director Dr. Mark Berends in all aspects of the project. He will aid with the planning of the project, including developing timelines for completion of project components, and ensuring that appropriate IRB and participant consent protocols are in place. Dr. Waddington will work with Dr. Berends and project partners at NORC in the development of survey items and the administration of the surveys to principals and teachers across schools in Indiana. He will also work with members of the Indiana Deaprtment of Education to obtain new, annual student, teaching, and school data records for students in Indiana. These records will be used to update an existing longitudinal database of student records. He will also work with graduate student research assistants to merge survey and student record data once the surveys have been administered. Dr. Waddington will work with Dr. Berends and supervise the graduate student research assistants in analyzing the student record and survey data. With the results from the analysis, he will again work with Dr. Berends and lead the graduate student research assistants in producing research articles to be disseminated through professional conferences and peer-reviewed journal outlets. Throughout the project, Dr. Waddington will communicate progress of his and his team's project activities to Dr. Berends through regular phone calls and occassional in-person meetings. He will contribute one and a half summer months in the first two years and two summer months in the third year. He will also contribute an increasing amount of his academic year time: 5% in year 1; 7.5% in year 2; 10% in year 3. Two graduate student research assistants (RA) will also contribute to research activities throughout the three years of the project. Dr. Waddington will work with the coordinators of the graduate program in the University of Kentucky College of Education to identify potential students to fill these roles. One RA will assist the project for an entire academic year (maximum of 20 hours per week), in turn receiving tuition, salary, healthcare, and fringe benefits. They will work closely with Dr. Waddington during the second year of the project in updating the existing longitudinal database containing student records from the Indiana Department of Education. In addition, they will work to merge survey data collected during the first year of the study with these longitudinal records. The RA will also assist with analyzing test score and survey data from the longitudinal records, and work with Dr. Waddington and Dr. Berends during the writing and dissemination phases. The RA will be expected to serve as a lead author or co-author on at least one article to be presented at a professional conference and further developed into a peer-reviewed journal article. The second RA will assist the project during the three summer months (maximum 20 hours per week), in turn receiving salary and fringe benefits. The role of this RA will change across years. During the first summer, the RA will aid in the planning of the project and the development of survey items and instruments. In the second summer, the RA will work on data cleaning and descriptive analysis of the longitudinal test score and survey records. In the third summer, the RA will assist with any remaining analysis of the records and the writing of results. This individual will be encouraged to contribute to the submission of a conference paper and possible peer-reviewed article depending on their level of interest and engagement. The RA serving in this position may rotate between years.