Stuart S. Yeh Associate professor of evaluation studies E-mail: yehxx008@umn.edu Phone: 612-624-0285 Office: 430D Wulling Hall  Mailing address: Dept. of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development University of Minnesota 330 Wulling Hall 86 Pleasant Street SE Minneapolis, MN 55455-0221

Current Research Interests

• Program evaluation
•  Cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost studies
•  State-mandated testing and high-stakes testing policies
•  Rapid formative assessment
•  Educational, economic, and governance reforms in sub-Saharan Africa

Profile

I spent the first part of my career working in a public school and then in community agencies serving underprivileged children and their families in San Francisco. I then worked at a research organization that designed, demonstrated and evaluated innovative education, training and employment programs. Subsequently, I completed my doctorate in educational evaluation at Stanford and a post-doc at Harvard. Prior to my appointment at the University of Minnesota, I worked on an evaluation of state-mandated high-stakes testing programs at Boston College’s Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy.

My recent publications focus on cost-effectiveness analyses that combine estimates of effect sizes with cost estimates, allowing comparisons of the "bang for the buck" of alternative policies, including a 10 percent increase in educational spending, voucher programs, charter schools, increased accountability, class size reduction, comprehensive school reform, NBPTS teacher certification, value-added teacher assessment, and programs that assess students 2 to 5 times per week and provide rapid feedback of the results to students and teachers. Other publications aimed to identify and assess promising ways of improving student engagement, raising student achievement, reducing student failure, and reducing narrowing of the curriculum as a consequence of high stakes testing. I've developed and validated instruments for quantitative assessments of critical thinking and argumentative writing, and identified and evaluated promising approaches for improving key phonemic awareness skills in Head Start programs and critical thinking and argumentative writing skills in middle school. I've also evaluated innovative NSF-funded curricula for teaching biotechnology and microbiology to middle and high school students.

I published a book that synthesizes my research regarding rapid assessment, pulls together meta-analyses of feedback interventions, summarizes research suggesting that the operative factor involves enhanced student feelings of control over academic achievement, and compares the effectiveness of the rapid assessment approach with alternative approaches.

Selected Publications

Book

Yeh, S. S. (2006). Raising student achievement through rapid assessment and test reform. Teachers College Press.

Articles

Yeh, S. S., & Ritter, J. (in press). The cost-effectiveness of replacing the bottom quartile of novice teachers through value-added teacher assessment. Journal of Education Finance.

Yeh, S. S. (in press). The cost-effectiveness of raising teacher quality. Educational Research Review. doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2008.06.002.

Yeh, S. S. (2009). The cost-effectiveness of class size reduction. Educational Research Review, 4, 7-15. doi: 10.1016/j.edurev.2008.09.001.

Yeh, S. S. (2009). Shifting the bell curve: The benefits and costs of raising student achievement. Evaluation and Program Planning, 32(1), 74-82.

Yeh, S. S. (2008). Raising the bar and reducing failure on state-mandated exit exams. Teachers College Record. Available at www.tcrecord.org (Number 14939).

Yeh, S. S. (2008). High stakes testing and students with disabilities: Why federal policy needs to be changed. In E. Grigorenko (Ed.), Educating individuals with disabilities: IDEIA 2004 and beyond (pp. 319-335). Springer.

Yeh, S. S. (2008). The cost-effectiveness of comprehensive school reform and rapid assessment. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 16(13).

Yeh, S. S. & Connell, D. B. (2008). Effects of rhyming, vocabulary and phonemic awareness instruction on phoneme awareness. Journal of Research in Reading, 31(2), 243-256.

Selameab, T., & Yeh, S. S. (2008). Evaluating intangible outcomes: Using multi-attribute utility analysis to compare the benefits and costs of social programs. American Journal of Evaluation, 29(3), 301-316. 

Yeh, S. S. (2007). The cost-effectiveness of five approaches for raising student achievement. American Journal of Evaluation, 28(4), 416-436.

Yeh, S. S. (2006). Can rapid assessment moderate the consequences of high-stakes testing? Education and Urban Society 39(1), 91-112.

Yeh, S. S. (2006). Reforming federal testing policy to support teaching and learning. Educational Policy, 20(3), 495-524

Yeh, S. S. (2006). High stakes testing: Can rapid assessment reduce the pressure? Teachers College Record, 108(4), 621-661.

Yeh, S. S. (2005). Limiting the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(43).

Yeh, S. S., (2003) An evaluation of two approaches for teaching phonemic awareness to children in Head Start, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 18(4), 513-529.

Yeh, S. S., (2001). Tests worth teaching to: Constructing state-mandated tests that emphasize critical thinking. Educational Researcher, 30(9), 12-17.

Yeh, S. S., (2000). Improving educational and social programs: A planned variation cross-validation model. American Journal of Evaluation, 21(2), 171-184.

Yeh, S. S., (2000). Building the knowledge base for improving educational and social programs through planned variation evaluations. American Journal of Evaluation, 21(1), 27-40.

Presentations

Yeh, S. S., (2009). Assessment issues, options, and costs. Testimony presented before the Minnesota House of Representatives, K-12 Education Finance Committee, February 11.

Yeh, S. S., (2009). Re-design of the Minnesota assessment system. Presentation before the Commissioner of Education’s Assessment Workgroup, Saint Paul, MN, January 30.

Yeh, S. S., (2009). Designing effective and equitable exit exam systems. Testimony presented before the Minnesota House of Representatives, K-12 Education Policy Committee, January 29.

Yeh, S. S., (2009). The cost-effectiveness of rapid assessment. Testimony presented before the Minnesota House of Representatives, K-12 Education Finance Committee, January 22.

Yeh, S. S., (2008). The cost-effectiveness of rapid assessment. Paper presented at the Ad Hoc Workshop: Taking Stock of Education Performance, From Student Testing to System Evaluation; sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Paris, France.

Yeh, S. S., (2008). The cost-effectiveness of class size reduction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association, Denver, CO.

Yeh, S. S., (2007). The benefits and costs of raising student achievement. Lecture presented at the annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association, Baltimore, MD.

Yeh, S. S., (2006). High stakes testing: Equity and accountability in Minnesota. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.

Yeh, S. S., (2005). Three ways of assessing program impact: John Snow, Donald Campbell, and randomized experiments. Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute, Minneapolis, MN.

Yeh, S. S., (2005). Raising student achievement. Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, Richfield, MN.

Yeh, S. S., (2004). Closing the achievement gap: Is rapid assessment the answer? Minnesota Assessment Group, Roseville, MN.

Yeh, S. S., (2003). Using rapid assessment to improve student achievement. Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute-Rochester, Rochester, MN.

Yeh, S. S., (2002). Evaluating social and educational programs. University of Minnesota Evaluation Studies Program-Rochester. Rochester, MN.

Yeh, S. S., and Connell, D. B. (2001). Teaching phonemic awareness to children in Head Start: A randomized evaluation of two approaches. Interagency Education Research Initiative, National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.

Yeh, S. S., (1999). Building the knowledge base for improving educational and social programs through planned variation field experiments. Annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association, Orlando, FL.

Yeh, S. S., (1999). Improving educational and social programs through collaborative evaluation research partnerships: An entrepreneurial model. Annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association, Orlando, FL.

Connell, D., Yeh, S. S., Barnes, H. (1999). Designing a quality enhancement study in Head Start. Commissioner's Office of Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC.

Yeh, S. S., (1999). Educational reform via school/university partnerships: The Role of evaluation. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada.

Yeh, S. S., (1998). Empowering education: Teaching argumentative writing to cultural minority middle school students. Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

Yeh, S. S., Slovacek, S., Wong, P., Shepard-Williams, T., (1996). Evaluating accelerated schools: The National Center for Accelerated Schools model. Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.

Education

• Ph.D., Stanford University, 1998, design and evaluation of educational programs
•  M.P.P., University of Michigan, 1984, public policy
•  B.A., University of Michigan, 1982, economics

Professional Experience

• Associate professor of evaluation studies - College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota (2008-present)
•  Assistant professor of evaluation studies - College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota (2002-2008)
• Senior research associate - Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy, Lynch School of Education, Boston College (2000-2001)
• Postdoctoral fellow in evaluating programs for children - Harvard Children's Initiative, Harvard University (1998-2000) 
•  Consultant - Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (1994)
•  Consultant - Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) (1993-1994)

Professional Affiliations

• American Evaluation Association, 1998-present
• American Educational Research Association, 1994-present

Revised March 2009