A selection of CORE's current projects are provided below. Access our full list of community and SMU partners here and contact core@smu.edu for additional or archival reporting.
Our Projects and Partners
CORE Partners
Active Playful Learning (APL)
The is funded by the LEGO Foundation and led by researchers at Temple University. CORE is serving as the local lead for the national study examining guided play in early learning settings. The multisite study will examine coaching strategies to support early childhood and early elementary teachers in providing APL instructional techniques in the classroom and resulting student outcomes.
Big Thought
For nearly a decade, CORE has served as an evaluation and data partner to Big Thought. Big Thought’s Dallas City of Learning initiative is helping to coordinate a network of out of school time providers to enhance the number and variety of learning opportunities available to youth. CORE is conducting ongoing evaluation, collaborating with Big Thought to envision long term outcomes and co-creating emerging knowledge about informal learning ecosystems. CORE also collaborates with Big Thought on their work to support Opportunity Youth in th DFW area and on the ELIS partnership with Dallas Afterschool.
The Bush Institute - Presidential Leadership Scholars
CORE is engaged in a long-term evaluation partnership with the George W. Bush Institute related to their Presidential Leadership Scholars program. CORE’s major efforts involve ongoing monitoring and reporting of survey data from active scholars as well as alumni and collaboratively refining the PLS theory of change and evaluation strategy to accommodate sustainability and additional attention to race, diversity, inclusion and equity.
Child Care Associates
CORE provides comprehensive early learning assessment, reporting, and evaluation services to Child Care Associates (CCA), located in Fort Worth, Texas. CCA provides high-quality early learning experiences to young children, delivers child care financial assistance and other vital resources to parents, and offers professional development opportunities to educators. CORE has been partnering with CCA since 2016. CCA is an innovating and learning organization, seeking to consistently improve implementation & outcomes. CORE provides twice-annual CLASS assessments and reporting for CCA classrooms, evaluates program impact on students, and provides general consultation and evaluation of innovations being implemented by CCA. In 2019, CORE was named the recipient of the CCA North Texas Early Childhood Leadership Award.
CLASS – Regional Data Partner
CORE serves as a data partner to multiple early childhood organizations utilizing the CLASS tool to improve classroom instruction. CORE trains observers on the CLASS™ observation system, maintains secure data, and develops formative reports and presentations for the district, feeder patterns, individual schools and individual teachers as well as non-profit partners and funders. Partners on this multi-faceted project include DallasISD, RichardsonISD, MesquiteISD, Early Matters Dallas/the Commit partnership specific to the TEA RECESS grant, Child Care Group, Child Care Associates, the Early Learning Alliance and Ft. Worth ISD, Uplift Charter Schools, and the Community Action Corporation of South Texas. CORE serves as a data partner to community organizations using the CLASS tool, and has conducted federally funded research about the effects of high-quality instruction on student outcomes and on effective strategies for achieving high quality instruction at scale.
- Technical Report: Effects of Sustained Quality in Pre-K, Kinder and First Grade in DallasISD: Full Technical Report (pdf)
- Farmer, D., Kara, Y., E., Wright, A., Hujar, J., Kamata, A. & Baker, S.K. Examining the Effects of Prekindergarten to Second Grade Classroom Quality on Early Elementary Achievement. Developmental Psychology. Submitted for Publication.
Dallas Afterschool
CORE and Dallas Afterschool have maintained a longstanding evaluation partnership that has evolved over multiple years of collaboration. Initially, CORE and DAS worked to establish impacts of quality afterschool programming on students’ academic, social & emotional wellbeing. Together, we added to the existing evidence showing positive impacts from afterschool for student academics. Currently, CORE and DAS continue to collaborate to disseminate knowledge about what works for promoting quality OST programming, including a refreshed look at student outcomes in 2025. DAS and CORE are partners along with Big Thought and DallasISD on the Expanded Learning Information System.
Dallas College School of Education
CORE is working in partnership with Dallas College's School of Education (DC-SOE) to conduct a multi-year evaluation of the early educator workforce development pipeline. DC-SOE's innovative teacher preparation pipeline is the state's first community college to be certified in providing a four-year bachelor's degree. This evaluation, partially funded by The Moody Foundation's MPACT initiative, will feature key questions designed to understand what works, for whom, and under what circumstances.
The Dr. Elba and Domingo Garcia West Dallas STEM School
CORE serves a critical operations and support role for the West Dallas STEM School project, a signature collaboration between Simmons School of Education and Human Development, DallasISD, and the Toyota Foundation to plan, implement and support a PreK-8 STEM School in West Dallas. This work is supported by grants from Toyota USA Foundation, the Truist Foundation, the Constantin Foundation, and Carter Creech. CORE’s Executive Director has served in a strategic leadership role, helping to shape the collaboration from its inception. CORE’s primary role on WDSS is supporting data access and data collection, ensuring that the research, evaluation and continuous improvement activities of the partnership are supported.
Forest Forward
CORE serves as an evaluation consultant to Forest Forward as they build out their strategic plans for transforming areas of South Dallas. In the initial stages of the work, CORE and Forest Forward are engaged in planning sessions to forecast long term outcome data needs, to strategize data access, to build data infrastructure and evaluation capacity, and to operationalize strategic plans so that key elements of the initiative are measurable. Currently, CORE supports the Forest Forward initative by helping to monitor outcomes from their academic pillar of work.
Jubilee Park and Community Center
CORE is partnering with Jubilee Park & Community Center, Dallas ISD, and the Consortium on Educational Research and Evaluation (CERI) on a nearly $1 million Promise Neighborhoods Grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education. CORE will evaluate the initiative and provide frequent formative data to inform the planning process.
Leaders Investigating Mathematics Evidence (LIME)
CORE is collaborating as an evaluator with the Simmons School of Education and Human Development’s Research in Mathematics Education for the LIME (Leaders Investigating Mathematics Evidence) project, funded by the Office of Special Education Programs to create the next generation of researchers and leaders with PhDs in special education with a focus on mathematics. The LIME grant provides tuition and stipend support, travel to conferences, and research support for twelve scholars for four years of doctoral studies. The program is being hosted at three universities: University of Texas, Austin; 91ƬSϼ; and University of Missouri.
Lena Pope Early Childhood Center
SMU CORE is engaging with Lena Pope to plan an expansion of their flagship early childhood center as well as to develop a comprehensive evaluation approach for long term monitoring, continuous improvement, and outcomes evaluation.
Read Up
CORE is serving as a data analysis partner with Communities Foundation Texas (CFT) and Read Up, a collaborative of four non-profit organizations that provide local literacy interventions. The Read Up collaborative includes: Beacon Hill Preparatory Institute, Catch Up and Read, Readers 2 Leaders, and Reading Partners. Using student-level data from Dallas ISD and Read Up attendance as well as other program data, the resulting reports will provide DISD and Read Up with rigorous insights about associations between Read Up programming and student literacy outcomes in the early grades (K-3).
SMU College Access Programs
CORE partners with the Simmons School’s College Access Programs to build evaluation capacity and data interoperability as well as to evaluate outcomes of key programs. This collaboration is aimed at increasing College Access’s ability to conduct rigorous analyses as a supplement and extension to existing evaluation activities and to build research infrastructure within the center as part of SMU’s overall Road to R1 status.
Teach For America
CORE is a long-term research, evaluation and thought partner for Teach for America. CORE conducted an initial impact evaluation of Teach for America’s impact in Texas sites, and has conducted multiple follow ups to date. CORE and TFA have leveraged those data to provide technical assistance to Texas regions, and to support a number of strategic initiatives. CORE and TFA continue exploring impacts for Texas students and have partnered to explore how the CLASS™ tool can support ongoing improvements.
Texas Partnership for Out of School Time (TXPOST)
CORE initially partnered with the Texas Partnership for Out of School Time (TXPOST) to conduct an initial landscape analysis to determine how providers across the state of Texas conceptualize and measure quality of OST programs and student outcomes. CORE now continues to serve as a thought partner, connecting local and statewide OST evidence and opportunities for improvement and is leading evaluation of TXPOST's OST CARES intiative.