Full Report - Center for Collaborative Education

C Sources of Data
In order to address the research questions, we drew
from several sources of student-level data that have
been combined into one comprehensive database.
The sources include:
Demographic and Enrollment Information.
This information was obtained from the Student
Information Management System (SIMS) on each
BPS student enrolled for each school year (SYs 2006
to SY2009).
Testing Data. Using a randomly generated unique
identifier for each student, results from the Massachusetts
Comprehensive Assessment System
(MCAS) and for LEP students, the Massachusetts
English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA) were
merged with the SIMS data file, thus allowing for
the analysis of academic outcomes.
School Descriptors. School-level variables which
were not available from the SIMS, MCAS, or MEPA
data files were downloaded from the appropriate
MDESE websites and merged with the student level
SIMS and testing data in order to conduct analyses
at the school level. In this case, the same value
for the school level variable was assigned to each
student attending that school.
Program Enrollment Data. For SY2006 to
SY2008, ELL program enrollment data available
through SIMS are used. The SIMS data element
for ELL program participation includes only the
categories of SEI, Two-Way, and “other bilingual
education.” BPS’s Office of English Language
Learners desired more specific information about
their programs and, over time, had collected and
logged data about enrollment in their programs.
Therefore, we worked with their data to further
disaggregate the ELL program offerings in SY2009.
For this year only, we present SEI programs disaggregated
by type (Multilingual or Language Specific,
the latter by language) and “other bilingual education”
programs disaggregated into Traditional TBE
and SIFE programs. The latter are further disaggregated
into Multilingual and Language Specific
(HILT-SIFE, by language). The research team worked
with the OELL to identify the specific programs in
which students participated school by school, based
on OELL information and the ELL student’s native
language. These data were then entered by hand
into a school database and SPSS syntax specific to
each school with an ELL program was developed for
the student-level database to recode the SIMS vari-
able into the expanded list of programs. Because
of the labor-intensive work required, and with the
approval of OELL, only the data for SY2009 were
hand-entered and therefore the detailed level program
data for other years are not available.
D Definitions of the
Demographic, Program,
School, and Outcome
Variables Used in the Study
Table 2, below, presents the outcome variables used
in this study as well as the demographic, program,
and school-level variables analyzed. It also presents
the operational definition of each variable as well
as the specific data source from which the data are
derived.
After cleaning and compiling the data files, basic
frequencies and cross-tabulations were conducted.
Specific aggregations of categories often responded
to the needs expressed by OELL. Appropriate statistical
tests were used to determine the significance
of the differences in outcomes among populations
and among LEP students enrolled in schools
showing different characteristics and in different
types of ELL programs. Finally, hierarchical linear
modeling was used to determine the relative effect
of individual and school-level factors on MCAS ELA
and Math outcomes of LEP students at elementary,
middle school, and high school levels.
A full discussion of the development of the
database, the limitations posed by the data, and
the analyses conducted appears in Appendix 1:
Methods.
8 Improving Educational Outcomes of English Language Learners in Schools and Programs in Boston Public Schools