Haiwen Wang

Haiwen Wang, Ph.D., is a research analyst in SRI International's Center for Education Policy. She has experience in quantitative research design and statistical modeling, and is especially interested in applying rigorous research methodology in evaluation studies. Her research focus is to disentangle the effects of educational interventions on student achievement from a variety of confounding factors. She also has extensive experience investigating the validity, reliability, and generalizability of assessments.

For the current four-year Texas High School Project (THSP) evaluation, Wang co-leads the longitudinal analysis examining the effect of THSP on student outcomes using statewide campus- and student-level databases. She designed a quasi-experimental approach using propensity score matching and hierarchical modeling to examine student achievement outcomes in THSP schools compared with matched non-THSP schools.

Wang also leads the student achievement analysis for the California District Intervention and Capacity Building Project (DAIT) for which she designed a quasiexperiment to examine achievement results of DAIT districts compared with a matched set of non-DAIT districts, using a combination of Mahalanobis metric matching and qualitative review of district characteristics. Dr. Wang also led the statistical analysis of San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools, where she used student-level data to construct the comparison group against which she assessed KIPP student achievement. She also participated in multiple research projects involving survey and other original data collection and analysis.

Previous work includes evaluating the impact of grade retention and ability grouping/academic tracking on student achievement. She participated in a series of studies evaluating different aspects of standard-based performance assessments and how different instructional interventions affect student performance on these assessments. In addition, she consulted for a school district on constructing efficient assessment systems.

Wang received her Ph.D. and M.A. in quantitative research methods in education from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her B.A. in English from Tianjin University in China. She was a lecturer of English language at Shanghai University for several years, where she taught reading and writing to students majoring in English.