Applied Research Center

Instructional Empowerment founded an independent Applied Research Center to verify that every service we provide to our partner schools and districts is evidence-based, impactful, and replicable. The Applied Research Center systematically uses high-quality research standards and state-of-the-art methods and tools to develop practical solutions for real-world social problems faced by educators.

Dr. Lindsey Devers Basileo, a What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Certified Reviewer, leads our Applied Research Center. She has over 15 years of experience in social science research. As our Director of Research, Dr. Basileo has an ethical obligation to collect and analyze data in an unbiased way. She conducts outcome evaluations of our treatment programs, using rigorous research methods that adhere to WWC standards. Additionally, she is consistently ensuring our instruments and metrics are validated against the measures that are most important to school districts. We always seek outside parties to peer review and confirm our results. This two-pronged approach to applied research—both in-house research plus peer review—ensures we will be successful both to our customers and our mission.

What is the What Works Clearinghouse and why does this matter to you?

The WWC is part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences and reviews evidence of effectiveness of programs, policies, or practices by using a consistent and transparent set of standards. The WWC supports educators in finding high-quality research and interventions according to the evidence requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). These evidence requirements ensure that state departments of education, school districts, and schools can identify practices that meet the needs of various student populations.

Everything we do is both research-based and evidence-based. We start with a strong theoretical research basis, but we don’t stop there. We rigorously test our methods to prove they achieve replicable results in various situations, across various populations of students.

Every activity, strategy, and intervention we use has attained or is in the process of attaining criteria for evidence-based practices under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Dr. Merewyn E. (“Libba”) Lyons is a Senior Research Analyst with the Applied Research Center of Instructional Empowerment. Her primary research interest is educational psychology, with a focus on deeper learning and understanding the effect of motivation on teaching, learning, and educational leadership. She is a member of the Center for Self-Determination Theory and of the American Educational Research Association.

As a retired officer of the United States Navy and a retired K-12 schoolteacher and administrator, Dr. Lyons is a decorated veteran who held high-level leadership positions on major Navy staff and as a commanding officer.

In her second career as an educator, she served as a classroom teacher, school administrator, and district executive director of large federally funded grant projects. Dr. Lyons brings over 40 years of deep experience in leadership, management, and education to the Applied Research Center.

To ensure objective, stringent research protocols, the Applied Research Center operates autonomously from the rest of the company. The Applied Research Center team has independence so it can hold the rest of our organization accountable to the highest research standards in every aspect of our work, from collecting data from our field faculty to strenuously testing our hypotheses.

We rigorously test all our school advancement methods to ensure they maximize positive effects on student outcomes. We are so dedicated to our research methodologies that our field staff are even taught “how to think like a researcher.” We invest a significant level of resources to fund the Applied Research Center because it continuously improves the services we provide to our partners.

Trust is earned. We go to the lengths of verifying our results through the Applied Research Center because this work matters to us.

The Applied Research Center strengthens ethical norms in the scientific and educational community. We transparently share data with our partners regardless of the findings because trust comes from transparency. We do not conceal results, and we aim to learn from them. This transparency is ultimately what helps move our partner schools forward and facilitates constructive conversations about areas for improvement. These conversations often clear the path to move a school forward.

Instructional Empowerment cares deeply about our social mission of ending generational poverty and eliminating racial achievement gaps through rigorous core instruction, and it is imperative to us that our methodologies are effective. Our team members have such a strong and consistent track record in school advancement because we align ourselves to research and hold ourselves to the highest standards set by our independent Applied Research Center.

We have an obligation to strengthen the ethical norms in the educational community because knowing the objective results is the only way in which we can move all schools forward.

We use data triangulation when conducting process and outcome evaluations. Each evaluation involves primary data collection (conducting observations and surveys), secondary data collection (using district and state student assessment data, and any other leading indicators of school effectiveness), in addition to qualitative research interviews from students, teachers, and administrators. All data is synthesized to estimate the impact and effectiveness of our services.

Each research design is created to answer the problem it aims to address. We always aim to have the highest-level standard; however, if an experimental design with random assignment is not feasible for the project, the next step would be to create a quasi-experimental design with a comparison group of like students in the district. Comparison groups are usually selected through propensity score matching and baseline equivalence is always investigated to ensure groups are equivalent. If there are no comparable groups available, then we will compare the school to itself over time by calculating learning rates by grade level. We also use correlational analysis to identify inputs for a more sophisticated analysis, or for understanding the relationship between variables.

Just like any project, there are certain tradeoffs that must be made in the applied research setting, our partner districts’ resources and time being the largest factors that impact how rigorous a study can be. However, regardless of these tradeoffs, we will always provide actionable results with appropriate caveats based off the methods and design. Every investigation that comes into the Applied Research Center will have actionable policy implications that are understandable to practitioners.

Our Applied Research Center provides regular data reports to our school and district partners. We hold ourselves accountable to the district’s shared goals and we utilize our research-validated metrics to ensure you are on track to achieve success.

Every month, our project leadership team meets with senior district leaders to report the progress of our work through an Executive Action Team process. We do this jointly with the school principals in our partnered schools.

Our keystone metrics were developed by our Applied Research Center team and are exclusive to Instructional Empowerment. These research-validated, predictive metrics show the real-time improvement of instructional systems within schools.

District leaders use our scientific indicators to see real-time progress of the instructional systems of student growth and achievement. The Rigor Appraisal instrument is scientifically correlated with both benchmark and state assessment learning gains.

District leaders use our Applied Research Center’s leading metrics to confidently predict student outcomes – without additional student testing. You will know if you are on track to achieve your goals – no more waiting and hoping.

Every step of our partnerships is guided by real-time predictive data. District leaders have absolute confidence in the project progress with transparent data sharing.