Appendix D: Data Analysis and Assessment Tools for FWISD Data Camp Fire partners with FWISD to gain access to data from student assessments currently used in the school district. Through this partnership, the CFSRP evaluation team has been able to assess the impact of the program for seven years with analyses of the children’s assessment scores not only as they enter school but also through their kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade years. Camp Fire contracted with Aware Research Solutions to provide evaluation and data analysis services.
The groups were matched on the following characteristics:
Each year, using a modified propensity matching process, the evaluation team compares the assessment scores of children who attended a CFSRP-supported center in one of the prior six years and children in -demographically similar comparison groups who did not attend one of the centers. This technique allows the evaluation team to create a random, non-biased sample of children who are similar to the sample of CFSRP children and, in turn, make valid comparisons between the two groups. Any statistically significant differences identified in the results provide evidence that the differences between CFSRP children’s scores and the comparison group’s scores can be attributed, in part, to the CFSRP program rather than to random chance.
To get the best possible match, the comparison groups are necessarily larger than the CFSRP groups. Students with Special Education designation are not included in the analyses (see Appendix E for the demographic descriptions of the CFSRP and comparison groups). Depending on the grade level for each set of comparison groups, the analyses were conducted with the FWISD assessment data described in the table on the next page, “FWISD Assessments Used in the Evaluation.” Because very few CFSRP children were assessed in Spanish only the English versions of each assessment were included in the analyses. For the same reason, students with LEP status were not included in the analyses.
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• School location • Grade level • Ethnicity • Free/Reduced Lunch Status • Gender
Appendices CAMP FIRE SCHOOL READINESS & EARLY EDUCATION APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM | 2020-2021 SCHOOL YEAR EVALUATION REPORT
