The Technical Working Group (TWG) is an external review committee that reviews the quality of research produced by REL Appalachia to ensure that it meets the standards of IES and the general scientific community.
- Johannes M. Bos, Ph.D.
American Institutes for Research (AIR) - Margaret Burchinal, Ph.D.
University of California, Irvine - Laura M. Desimone, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania - Barbara D. Goodson, Ph.D.
Abt Associates - Rebecca A. Maynard, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania - Samuel C. Stringfield, Ph.D.
University of Louisville
Dr. Hans Bos is the CEO and a Principal Research Analyst at Berkley Policy Associates (BPA). He has more than ten years' experience designing and conducting program evaluations, policy studies, and social demonstration projects. Before joining BPA in 2002, Dr. Bos was a Senior Research Associate at the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), where he led and contributed to prominent national studies of welfare-to-work initiatives, demonstration projects serving teen parents and disadvantaged youth, and research projects focusing on the effects of welfare programs on parents and children. Dr. Bos is a recognized expert in program evaluation design, statistical analysis of evaluation data, and welfare and youth policy analysis. Recently, he has specialized in the analysis of developmental outcomes for children in the context of social interventions targeted at their parents.
At BPA, Dr. Bos participates in several research projects as a Co-Principal Investigator and advises a number of other projects as a senior reviewer. He fulfills such senior roles in the following BPA projects:
- California Welfare Time Limits Study
- State of Louisiana's Temporary Assistance and Needy Families (TANF) Evaluation
- Evaluation of the Model Self-Help Centers Pilot Program
- Evaluation of Safe Passages
- Redesign of GED Annual Statistical Report
- Understanding the Role of Intermediaries under Workforce Investment Agencies
Dr. Margaret Burchinal is the Director of the Design and Statistical Computing Unit at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center located at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She is also a Research Professor in the Psychology department and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics.
Dr. Burchinal has focused her work on using growth curve statistical methods to describe individual patterns of development. She is a nationally recognized expert in statistical modeling, especially for longitudinal data. Dr. Burchinal has served as the primary statistician for many educational studies of early childhood, including the 11-state Pre-Kindergarten Evaluation for the National Center for Early Learning and Development, the longitudinal study of 1300 children in NICHD Study of Early Child Care and the four-state evaluation of child care in the Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes Study. As an applied methodologist, she has helped to demonstrate that sophisticated methods such as meta-analysis (Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Bryant, & Clifford, 2000), fixed-effect modeling (NICHD ECCRN & Duncan, 2003), hierarchical linear modeling, piecewise regression (Campbell, Pungello, Miller-Johnson, Burchinal, & Ramey, 2001), and generalized estimating equations provide educational researchers with advanced techniques to address important educational issues.
She is a member of several boards and committees, including the Advisory Board for Research Bureau of the Maternal and Child Health, Advisory Council for Head Start, Advisory Board for the Los Angeles Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program, and NICHD Special Emphasis Review Committee. Dr. Burchinal is also a panel reviewer for the Institute for Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
She earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a B.S. from Iowa State University.
Dr. Laura M. Desimone is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She has studied how state, district, and school- level policy can better promote changes in teaching that lead to improved student achievement and to closing the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Her work contributes to theory, and informs policy and classroom practice. Her research covers three main areas: policy effects on teaching and learning, policy implementation, and the improvement of methods for studying policy effects and implementation (e.g., improving the quality of surveys and the appropriate use of multiple methodologies). She studies all levels of the system (national, state, district, school, and classroom), and focuses on three policies at the forefront of education reform: standards-based reform, comprehensive school reform, and teachers' professional development. Dr. Desimone is the Principal Investigator on a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation on "How Does Induction and Continuing Professional evelopment Affect Middle School Mathematics Teachers' Instruction and Student Achievement?" She has also published extensively in the education research literature, practitioners' journals, and invited volumes.
Dr. Barbara Goodson is Principal Scientist and Abt Associates' most senior expert on child development and education research for the past 28 years. Trained at Stanford University in child development and evaluation, Dr. Goodson currently functions as a company-wide resource on design and measurement, specializing in research on early childhood, including technical issues in measurement and assessment of young children. Currently Dr. Goodson is directing studies of a range of multi-site studies of early childhood language and literacy interventions, which are being tested in sites nationwide.
These include the fourth national evaluation of the Even Start program, which is a randomized cluster study for the Department of Education of two scientifically based language and literacy interventions for preschoolers, in a national sample of Even Start projects. Also, Dr. Goodson is directing an impact evaluation for Houghton-Mifflin of its new preschool curriculum, HM Pre-K. She just completed a randomized study for the Child Care Bureau of three language and literacy curriculum in a sample of subsidized childcare centers in Miami-Dade County. For these studies, Dr. Goodson co-authored a state-of-the-art observation system for evaluating the quality of instructional practices in literacy and language development in early childhood programs and parenting education.
Throughout her research career, Dr. Goodson has been responsible for selecting and developing measures of (a) parent outcomes, including parenting behavior, parent attitudes, and family functioning; (b) child and youth outcomes, including cognitive development and school performance, social behavior and risk behavior, physical development and health; and (c) the quality of program services. Dr. Goodson has synthesized results of educational interventions, and she has co-authored a review of promising practices in parent education programs, a review of two-generation programs, and a meta-analysis of the impact data from evaluations of two-generation programs. She also was a senior technical reviewer on a recent meta-analysis of the effects on early childhood education. Previously Dr. Goodson was involved in an early childhood study comparing the quality of the environments in three types of care for children from low income families: Head Start, Title 1 pre-kindergartens, and community child care.
Dr. Rebecca Maynard has been University Trustee Professor of Education and Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania since 1993. She teaches courses in research methods, economics, and education policy, directs the University's Institute for Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Methods for Education Research, and maintains an active research agenda focused on youth risk reduction and skills attainment. Since 2004, she also has served as Senior Program Associate with the William T. Grant Foundation.
Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty, Dr. Maynard was Senior Vice President of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., (MPR). During her ears at MPR, she directed many large-scale social experiments and applied esearch studies examining issues related to welfare policy, employment and training policy, services for teenage parents, teenage pregnancy prevention, and child care policy.
Dr. Maynard is a member and past President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, as well as a member of the American Economics Association, the American Education Research Association, and the Population Association of America. She serves on numerous advisory panels, including the Academic Board for the Western International School of Shanghai (WISS), the Research and Effective Program Task Force of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the editorial boards for the Center for the Future of Children, and the Technical Review Team for the What Works Clearinghouse.
Dr. Samuel Stringfield is the Academic Director of the Nystrand Center of Excellence in Education, a Distinguished University Scholar, and a Professor in the Departments of Teaching and Learning and Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education at the University of Louisville. He was formerly a Principal Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS). He served as co-director of the Systemic Supports for School Reform section of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR). Stringfield is also co-director of the Program on Integrated Reform at the University of California at Santa Cruz' Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE). He is founding editor of the Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR), and a member of the City of Baltimore's New Board of School Commissioners.
Stringfield has authored over 100 articles, chapters, and books. His research focuses on designs for improving programs within schools (e.g., The Special Strategies Studies, Stringfield et al., 1997), for improving whole schools, (e.g., Bold Plans for School Restructuring: The New American Schools Designs, Stringfield, Ross, & Smith, 1996) for improving systemic supports for schools serving disadvantaged schools, and international comparisons of school effects.
Prior to coming to the University of Louisville, Stringfield worked as a teacher, a program evaluator, a Tulane University faculty member, and as coordinator of the Denver office of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. As a Kellogg Fellow, Stringfield studied the politics and economics of school improvement in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Stringfield has served as the chairman of the School Effectiveness and Improvement special interest group and is on the annual meeting committee of the American Educational Research Association. He was 1997 program chair and 1999 program co-chair of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI). Dr. Stringfield serves or has served as a reviewer for a variety of educational journals including: American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and olicy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Elementary School Journal, Journal of Classroom Interaction (Editorial Board member), Journal of Teacher Education, Psychological Bulletin, Review of Educational Research, School Effectiveness and School Improvement (Editorial Board member), and Urban Education.