Rickles, Heppen, Allensworth, Sorensen, and Walters (2018) compare two credit recovery programs with a null hypothesis of equal effects. Upon failing to reject the null, they implicitly accept the null. However, not rejecting the null is not equivalent to accepting the null, a confusion common to a range of research, which I highlight.
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JacobR.SomersM.-A.ZhuP.BloomH. (2016). The validity of the comparative interrupted time series design for evaluating the effect of school-level interventions. Evaluation Review, 40(3), 167–198. doi:10.1177/0193841X16663414
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KaneT. J.StaigerD. O. (2008). Estimating teacher impacts on student achievement: An experimental evaluation (Working Paper No. 14607). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
8.
RicklesJ.HeppenJ. B.AllensworthE.SorensenN.WaltersK. (2018). Online credit recovery and the path to on-time high school graduation. Educational Researcher, 47(8), 481–491. doi:10.3102/0013189X18788054
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SteinbergM. P.GarrettR. (2016). Classroom composition and measured teacher performance: What do teacher observation scores really measure?Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 38(2), 293–317. doi:10.3102/0162373715616249
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SteinerP. M.WongV. C. (2018). Assessing correspondence between experimental and nonexperimental estimates in within-study comparisons. Evaluation Review, 42(2), 214–217. doi:10.1177/0193841X18773807
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