Educational Impact Calculator: 

A Tool for Education Consumers

Each year, educational consumers – teachers, school administrators, policy makers, and parents – receive reports of how well their students have scored on state assessments and, often, other tests. There are many questions they may want to answer: Are our students doing better (or worse) than those in other schools? Are they doing better this year than last year? Are recent changes in my school different than the changes in other schools? Perhaps, most important, are the differences large enough to be considered educationally important? Could they have just occurred by chance?

The research community has well developed methods and criteria to answer these questions, but most educational consumers are far from comfortable with the underlying calculations and statistical procedures. They may be left wondering what the assessment results mean and feel that they are at the mercy of researchers and other “experts” to calculate statistics and interpret the data. The Educational Impact Calculator (EIC) is designed to help break the barrier between the “experts” and the consumers, empowering those who are closest to the data to answer questions regarding assessment results. It provides a simple way for educational consumers to use publicly available data to determine if changing achievement patterns in their school would meet the criteria researchers use to denote educationally important and statistically significant results.

What questions can the Educational Impact Calculator Answer? Read More

What statistics does the EIC produce? Read More

What data are needed to use the EIC?  Read More

Where can I get information about the statistical calculations that are used? Read More

Can I see examples of the results? Read More 

What are possible uses and limits of the EIC? Read More

Try the EIC. Click Here

The EIC was developed when I was employed by the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI). NIFDI is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping schools implement Direct Instruction curricular programs and to conducting and publicizing high-quality research on the effects of DI implementations. To find out more about NIFDI, Click Here.

If you have comments or questions about the calculator or the website, please contact us. e-mail