2018 Research Year In Review

Overdeck Family Foundation supported 22 new research projects in 2018, providing total funding of over $5.6 million.

Our funding led to:

• 4 Published Reports: Making Pre-K Count, Opportunity Myth, National Parent Survey & Maximizing Student Agency
• 3 New RCTS
• 3 New Quasi-Experimental Studies
• 2 Peer-Reviewed High-Quality Journal Articles: Math Anxiety and Parent Coaching
• 1 Working Paper Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility (NBER)

 Below are further details on the projects:

• ECRI Robin Hood (MDRC): The impact of the math enrichment of both pre-k and kindergarten interventions, Making Pre-K Count and High 5’s, was equal to closing the math achievement gap by 29%.
• Zero to Three (Latino Decisions): In a large national parent survey (n=2,200), educational attainment was found to moderate how parents utilize and trust scientific evidence.
• I-LABS (University of Washington): Parent coaching significantly enhanced language input, and intervention infants produced more words than control infants.
• Bedtime Math (University of Chicago): Children of higher-math–anxious parents learn less math in 1^st through 3rd grades, but this was not the case when families used the Bedtime Math app.
• TNTP: The Opportunity Myth described results from 4,000 students who reported they spent more than 500 hours during the school year on assignments that were not grade-appropriate.
• Student-Centered Research Collaborative- Jobs For the Future (American Institute of Research): Researchers found that when students maximize their agency by discussing math problems, they deepen their understanding, increase their sense of belonging, and see themselves as a “math person.”
• Opportunity Insights (Harvard): Researchers found that children’s outcomes vary sharply across nearby areas: for children of parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution, the standard deviation of mean household income at age 35 is $5,000 across tracts within counties.