• multi-disciplinary: our team includes consultants with expert backgrounds in education, education technology, organizational development, statistics, research methods, educational psychology, public policy and school finance.

• cross-functional: we look at educational systems, not silos, and have broad experience in a variety of educational and organizational settings, including schools, school districts, state departments of education, universities, pre-service teacher education, foundations and corporations.

• user focused: we design solutions to meet the needs of specific end-users, from principals and teachers to district and corporate staff with specific functional accountability.

• action oriented: evaluation is research in the service of action; ARS principals are uninterested in esoteric what-ifs or nice-to-know research. Our aim is to help educators and the organizations that assist them to find and use quality data to make well-grounded decisions.

• standards-based: although we aim for clarity in writing and presenting, our projects typically adhere to, build on, or augment standards and frameworks appropriate to the task

• policy wise: we work every day within the context of No Child Left Behind and a variety of state and federal accountability and policy frameworks, and actively help our clients comply with the appropriate policies while achieving organizational excellence.

What We Do

Consulting and Professional Services: : For school districts, state agencies and education-related organizations Arroyo Research Services provides strategic consulting and professional services designed to provide discovery, analysis, insight, and direction. Our work typically includes input from major stakeholders, comparisons to best practice and other education organizations, and institutional capacity building. In Baltimore County Public Schools, for example, ARS led the development of a new Curriculum Management Plan, facilitating joint work across the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction, Professional Development and Research, Accountability and Assessment, together with Area Superintendents and Principals.

Research and Evaluation Design and Advisory Services:: For school districts, state agencies, foundations, and education-related corporations, Arroyo Research Services principals have designed accountability and decision support systems, guided the development of new research and evaluation divisions, designed data collection and presentation systems, and developed research and evaluation plans that implement strong research designs. For Ohio SchoolNet, an Arroyo Research Services principal designed a project portfolio system that served as the primary data collection and analysis tool for the summative evaluation of the Interactive Video Distance Learning Program. Together with TrueNorthLogic, Arroyo Research Services is designing online dashboards, reports and decision support tools to measure the efficacy of project implementation and professional development for the Hawaii Department of Education and Montgomery County Public Schools. For the California Department of Education’s EdTechProfile, Arroyo Research Services developed a variety of online reports and expanded surveys to better meet the needs of the project's stakeholders.

ARS design and advisory services include custom design of dashboarding, reporting, monitoring and measurement tools. Many student information systems, for example, manage the daily transactions of attendance, grading and discipline quite ably, but fail to provide meaningful real-time reports to assist in decision making. Moreover, few systems provide teacher, human resources, financial and student data in useful combinations for performance monitoring, planning, or reporting, requiring substantial manual processes to be repeated each time the data is needed. ARS can help specify the reports that would aid in decision making or expedite compliance, and design them into your system.

Program EvaluationArroyo Research Services has strong experience in education program evaluation, with particular strengths in evaluating professional development, the development of complex online education applications, distance learning, and education technology. Within the area of professional development, we work within models developed by Guskey, Killion, and the National Staff Development Council to assure that data collection and reporting includes appropriate data from the PD experience, changes in teacher practice, and related student performance. Arroyo Research Services recently serviced as Special Advisor to the APQC K-12 Professional Development Benchmarking Study. Our principals have developed and led program evaluations that include: nine U.S. Department of Education funded Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) projects, programs funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the National Science Foundation, and STAR Schools program, and state and local grant programs in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Florida and New York. Evaluation projects have also included review of a large district English Language Learner initiative and evaluation support for a state-funded NCLB regional technical assistance center.

Data Collection and Analysis: Arroyo Research Services has deep strength in statistical analysis and data cleaning, manipulation and analysis, and manages multiple aspects of client research and evaluation data needs, from online or paper-based survey design, administration, tabulation or analysis, to focus groups, interviews, and other qualitative research.

Scientifically Based Research: ARS designs and executes real-world studies that meet the “Scientifically Based Research” criteria identified by the No Child Left Behind Act and the U.S. Department of Education. Our experience with real research in real schools under real constraints helps organizations meet the demands for scientifically based research.

Project Design and Proposal Writing: Senior staff at Arroyo Research Services have been responsible for obtaining millions of dollars of government, foundation and corporate funds for universities, schools, nonprofit community based organizations, health policy initiatives, and government agencies. Recently, an ARS principal wrote an evaluation plan for a major U.S. Department of Education program that scored a perfect 30 out of 30 available points. We can assist you with your project design and proposal writing needs, particularly as they relate to research and evaluation.

Workshops, Seminars, and Speaking: ARS presents at conferences and seminars across the country on research and evaluation issues. Kirk Vandersall has recently conducted evaluation seminars for the U.S. Department of Education, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, Ohio SchoolNet, and the Green Bay Area Consortium. Recent conference presentations include sessions at the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), APQC, Society for Information Technology in Education (SITE), American Education Research Association (AERA), National Education Computing Conference (NECC), and the eTech Ohio Annual Conference.

How we work:

Arroyo Research Services is a contract research and evaluation services organization. We have flexible contracting, including fixed price contracts for evaluation and research work, per diem for short-term consulting and speaking, and time and materials for long-term consultancies and advisory projects.

We work with each client to establish the communication and project management regime that best meet their needs, assuring timely completion of tasks and communication of results.

We adhere to and strongly support the evaluation standards established by the Joint Committee on Standards for Education Evaluation adopted by the American Evaluation Association. We follow and routinely ground our work in the standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and the National Staff Development Council (NSDC).