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Since 1980, Experiencia has tested the efficacy of its Immersive Learning model through a number of large-scale studies of Exchange City. These have been university-based assessments and their findings consistently report statistically significant gains by students regarding knowledge of economic and social studies concepts, skills and aptitudes.

In addition, a number of our program licensees and numerous school districts have conducted their own assessment strategies and have reported that they find EarthWorks and Exchange City to be outstanding, effective and powerful learning curricula that improves achievement and excitement about learning for a wide variety of students.

What are assessment strategies today for both Exchange City and EarthWorks?

Experiencia continuously analyzes the content and processes of EarthWorks and Exchange City to insure alignment with the national and local needs and priorities of schools and districts. The curriculum, teacher training and parent involvement strategies of EarthWorks and Exchange City have been aligned with the State Curriculum Frameworks as well as Career and Employability Benchmarks.

In addition, The No Child Left Behind Act recently mandated federal education standards have been reviewed and integrated into the EarthWorks and Exchange City school year and summer programming. Consequently, Experiencia has piloted a new assessment strategy that diagnoses the impact on students of this most current EarthWorks and Exchange City curricula.

What are new options for assessment of both Exchange City and EarthWorks?

Experiencia has contracted for a major new evaluation assessment to be conducted in the 2004-05 school year by the Washington-based research firm Tabori Whitehead, Inc. This quasi-experimental design content was tested for Exchange City in a preliminary study in 2002 called the EXACTA project.

What was the EXACTA assessment design?

EXACTA was an internet-based, criterion-referenced test of the 5 th and 6 th grade Exchange City curriculum that measured specific outcomes aligned with national and state standards. This means that EXACTA measures the actual knowledge students gain between the pre-test (administered before the beginning of the Exchange City curriculum) and the post-test (administered within 2 weeks after the simulation experience).

EXACTA was preliminary prototype testing research with inner-city, rural and suburban students (N=102) in regional Kansas City in spring, 2002. This prototype research was partially underwritten by the Honda Foundation and advised by Dr. Warren Wheelock, Professor of Education, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Dr. Wheelock is the author of the Classroom Reading Inventory (McGraw Hill), and a national expert in assessment and diagnosis.

What are the outcomes of the prototype EXACTA research testing?

Positive and significant student gains: Every child gained from the pre- to post-test and average testing gains were highly significant.

Students on and above grade level excelled: 53 percent of the children tested as reading on or above grade level. These students scored on average at the 60 th percentile on the pre-test and at the 81 st percentile on the post-test. This is an average increase of 35 percent.

Students below grade level made the greatest gains: 47 percent of the children in this study tested as reading one or more levels below grade. These students scored on average at the 48.6 th percentile on the pre-test and 72.7 th percentile on the post-test. This is an average increase of 49 percent.

Further analysis of the lowest achieving students: We disaggregated further the scores of the lowest performing students, about half of the below-grade level students. This group, 22 percent of the test population, scored as reading 2 or more levels below grade (3 rd grade or below):

Pre-test: This lowest performing sub-group’s pre-test scores averaged at the 41.7 th percentile This was 13 percentiles lower than students who scored 1 level below grade level and 18.3 percentiles lower than students on or above grade level.

Post-test:These students in the lowest performing category scored on average on the post-test at the 71.6 th percentile, demonstrating a remarkable average increase of 72 percent.

Outcomes point to an exceptional impact on low achieving students. We will validate these exceptional increases for low-achieving students found in this research with a wider sample size in regional Detroit. Even so, increases of this magnitude are an extraordinary outcome and an exciting indicator for additional research.

In what subject areas did the students make the most growth?

Students in this study showed significant overall gains on general economic and social studies concepts and priorities. The EXACTA outcomes also point to two major categories, government, finance and banking and related math applications, in which the students made exceptional advancements.

Government and finance are areas in which the students appeared to have little, if any, background prior to participating in the Exchange City program. They are also excellent examples of how Exchange City’s curriculum and hands-on simulation activities help students’ master new and complex concepts in vivid and memorable ways:

Government, social studies and civics: On items related to government, social studies, civics and legal concepts, only 25 percent of the students answered all of the pre-test items correctly. On the post-test, 67 percent were able to answer all items correctly.

Finance and accounting math-based systems: No student was able to answer on the pre-test all of the questions correctly related to math and concepts of bank accounting systems. On the post-test, 67 percent of the students were able to accurately manage their checking accounts and answer all items correctly.

What are the overall outcomes of the preliminary research?