The Kingsbury Research Award
NWEA is committed to supporting the next generation of researchers and scholars with the Kingsbury Research Award. Named in honor of Dr. Gage Kingsbury, a pioneer in adaptive achievement testing, this award is available to graduate students and university researchers without project funding. The award helps them further their research goals by providing access to our anonymized longitudinal student achievement data.
Recent Kingsbury Research Award Winners
Aimee Yoon
Aimee Yoon received a data award for research at The Ohio State University exploring the role students’ time in schools and in summers play in academic achievement gaps. With her coauthor, Joseph Merry, she found that the higher average academic achievement seen in Asian American students is maintained primarily through faster rates of learning in the summer months in Understanding the role of schools in the Asian-white gap: a seasonal comparison approach.
Mina Lee
Mina Lee received a data award to support her dissertation research at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her ongoing work examines the use and impact of test accommodations like text-to-speech on test performance and test engagement for students with and without disabilities.
Previous Kingsbury Research Award Winners
Anna J. Egalite
North Carolina State University’s Anna Egalite and her co-author Brian Kisida (University of Missouri) received a data award while both at the University of Arkansas to look at student achievement impacts related to school size. The researchers evaluated students from more than 2,800 schools over four years and concluded that school size has a meaningful impact on student achievement.
Joseph Merry
Furman University’s Joseph Merry received a data award to support his dissertation research while at Ohio State University on the role of schools in the context of economic inequality. His paper Education in the Era of Rising Inequality: Are Schools Becoming the Great(er) Equalizer? analyzes longitudinal student achievement data to understand how school and outside-of-school influences impact school effectiveness.
Award recipients will receive, at no cost, a dataset comprised of anonymized data relevant to their research needs. In addition, the recipient will receive a set amount of technical assistance from research staff in using the data.
At the time of application, students must be enrolled in a masters or doctoral program at a US college or university. Research Award recipients will be chosen on a competitive basis by a selection committee at NWEA. Selection will be based on the suitability and the technical strength of the applicant’s proposed research project. Criteria that will be considered include importance of the problem, clarity of the proposal, and the degree to which the proposed research requires the longitudinal achievement data contained in the Growth Research Database.
To apply for the award, please submit the application cover sheet on the second page of this document and the materials specified below to research.questions@nwea.org:
- A one- or two-page abstract of your study that defines the purpose, research question/hypothesis, and study design, and includes a description of the data needed for your research
- A copy of your curriculum vitae
- A letter of endorsement from your advisor
- Contact Information: name, email address, mailing address, phone number, institution, advisor name and advisor contact information, degree, and program
Please note that graduate student award recipients are required to have a graduate advisor as the institutional representative for research projects. If you receive the award, we will need an agreement between your host organization and NWEA that is designed to ensure proper handling of the data, permissions from participants (if needed), and confidentiality protections.
Kingsbury Research Award Application
Questions?
Get in touch with our research department