HIGHLIGHTS
- The MSP program strengthens teachers’ math and science teaching skills.
- Abt provides the program technical and analytical support.
- Abt also provides assistance to local evaluators and state staff.
The Challenge
The goal of the U.S. Department of Education’s Mathematics and Science Partnership (MSP) program is to boost students’ academic achievement in math and science. The approach for doing that is to augment classroom teachers’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content knowledge and teaching skills.
The Approach
Abt has provided technical and analytic support to the MSP program since 2005. Activities include:
- Developing and maintaining the MSP project website
- Collecting annual progress reports from all MSP projects
- Providing technical assistance in preparing APR data and in conducting evaluations
- Preparing annual summary reports
- Reviewing grantee evaluations to assess MSP projects’ designs
The Results
Abt staffers annually review evaluation reports of final-year MSP projects, using What Works Clearinghouse standards to determine the extent to which the projects conducted rigorous evaluations. To increase use of rigorous designs, Abt provides sessions for local evaluators as a part of annual conferences and prepared a user-friendly guide for reporting on rigorous designs for MSP projects. We provide feedback to state staff about the findings of our evaluations to increase their understanding of common evaluation issues. Learn more: