From Intervention to Impact: Analyzing Educational Effectiveness in U.S.

Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center 

Evidence-based education policy increasingly relies on systematic reviews to inform the adoption and scaling of instructional programs. We examine heterogeneity in educational intervention effectiveness using the What Works Clearinghouse dataset maintained by the U.S. Department of Education. To address the question of "what works, for whom, and under what conditions," we analyze intervention–protocol combinations across outcome domains and student subgroups. In contrast to prior work that emphasizes average intervention effects, our analysis focuses on subgroup-specific effectiveness across populations, geographic regions, educational contexts, and implementation conditions. We leverage hierarchical models to account for findings nested within studies and interventions, and integrate external data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau to incorporate broader educational and demographic context. By comparing overall and subgroup-specific results, we identify interventions with broad effectiveness as well as those whose impacts are concentrated in particular populations or settings.

Subgroup Analysis

Hierarchical Modeling

Causal Inference 

Section on Statistical Computing