Gibson’s mission is to better the lives of students by providing exemplary educational consulting and research services that make educational systems more efficient and effective.
Gibson addresses virtually any academic, operational, program, or administrative need you face in public education by offering a wide range of consulting and research services that improve the efficiency, effectiveness, compliance, and decision-making in educational systems.
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Performance/Internal Audit |
Gibson helps school systems improve their efficiency, effectiveness, and compliance through two primary service areas – Performance Audits and Internal Audits. Performance Audits include the analysis of school district’s staffing, expenditures, quality of services, process efficiency, organizational structures, and use of information systems. These projects often result in cost savings to the district’s general fund that can be redirected towards academic programming or used to reduce expected budget deficits. Instead of across the board budget cuts applied by many school systems, Gibson’s performance audits target areas of inefficiency to provide financial relief.
Gibson’s Internal Audit services are similar to its performance audit services in that they review efficiency and effectiveness at the department and program level. However, internal audits go deeper in addressing compliance, data integrity, and internal controls. Unlike many internal audit functions that focus on financial controls and risks, our approach is much broader, covering virtually every aspect of school system operations. Gibson’s internal audit programs are not “gotcha” programs that investigate people; they are continuous improvement initiatives that enhance systems and processes. Internal Audits can be conducted as single projects or as long-term improvement programs.
Below are links to examples of Gibson’s performance audit and internal audit services.
81,000 students
Gibson was engaged by the School District of Lee County (Lee County) to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the district’s major operations and programs. Gibson conducted a global data scan of district efficiency and developed an efficiency report card for each major program, administrative, and operational area. The scope of the assessment included all administrative and operational areas, including general district management, school management, human resources, business services, facilities management, technology management, food services management, and transportation Management.
Gibson worked with the administration to define performance measures for each area, collected and validated data, and calculated performance measures for Lee County and peer districts. The trend in Lee County measures over the past five years and results of peer comparisons were recorded in an efficiency report card for each of the areas above.
40,000 students
Gibson was contracted by Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD) to conduct a comprehensive review of the District’s special education programs and services. At the time of the review, CCISD’s special education student enrollment had outpaced overall student enrollment growth by a wide margin (16% compared to 5%) over the previous six years. The primary objective of Gibson’s review was to identify areas of strength within the special education department as well as opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness, in order to ultimately improve outcomes for students receiving special education services. The scope of the review included an assessment of CCISD’s special education department organizational structure and staffing allocations, financial management practices, IEP compliance, teacher qualifications and retention, as well as other areas. Gibson’s recommendations ultimately addressed a wide range of areas for improvement, ranging from the creation of a special education parent resource center to the monitoring and tracking of Response to Intervention (RTI) data.
83,000 students
Gibson was selected by the Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) Board to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of selected functional areas within the Local Education Agency (LEA). Gibson’s scope of the performance audit included a review of the following functional areas: governance and management, senior academic management, financial management, human resources management, and information technology. Gibson made 35 recommendations to improve operating efficiency and effectiveness. Several recommendations were made that addressed challenges in all of the functional areas reviewed:
The inefficiency in AACPS’ business processes resulted in much higher levels of clerical positions relative to its peers. The estimated cost savings associated with reducing the clerical/staff ratio to their peer average was approximately $3 million annually.
329,000 students
Clark County School District (CCSD) – the fifth-largest school system in the United States – selected Gibson from among six competing firms to conduct a comprehensive educational and operational efficiency assessment. This comprehensive evaluation, conducted in a condensed timeframe (3 months), involved the identification of major cost reduction opportunities, a review of the District’s budget process, development of a data dashboard prototype for performance measure tracking, a review of educational programs and management, and a student performance review. Gibson collected and analyzed over 1,000 documents from CCSD and interviewed approximately 260 CCSD staff members. Gibson identified 45 recommendations for improvement which was estimated that, if fully implemented, would result in annual General Fund net cost reductions of approximately $52 million per year. For this project, Gibson also developed a data dashboard prototype for CCSD to use in performance measure tracking.
207,000 students
Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) contracted with Gibson to conduct an Educational and Operational Efficiency Audit to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the district’s major operations and programs over a 16-month period. This work was prompted by a $140 million budget deficit that needed to be addressed. Instead of across-the-board cuts, HCPS hired Gibson to make more informed budget reductions that targeted inefficient practices.
Gibson conducted this work in three phases (i.e., Phase I: Operational Audit, Major Cost Savings; Phase II: Operational Audit, Comprehensive Review; and Phase III: Academic Management Audit). Our work included the collection and analysis of extant data, staff interviews, school leader interviews, classroom walkthroughs, focus groups with various stakeholders, and comparisons to peer, state, and national data. The results of the Phase I and Phase II audits identified significant opportunities for HCPS to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its central office operations, which resulted in a net savings of $100 million per year. The findings identified during Phase III yielded several recommendations for improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of HCPS’ instructional programs.
Gibson has served as the internal auditor for the Killeen ISD Board of Trustees since 2014. Similar to the arrangement with FBISD described above, Gibson reports to the Board Audit Committee (BAC) and conducts a wide range of departmental and program audits. The overall goal of the program is continuous improvement. Below are examples of internal audits conducted by Gibson for KISD.
Gibson conducted an audit of Killeen Independent School District’s (KISD) student information system and state data submission functions, which included an assessment the existence and adequacy of controls, processes and procedures in place within the student information system and the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) functions. The audit also validated that the data generated by both functions are accurate and compliant with state standards. The audit team reviewed documents, and conducted process mapping sessions, interviews, focus groups, and campus visits. The audit resulted in 16 recommendations which addressed organizational misalignments, insufficiency of training, lack of automation of key processes, and lack of controls. Due to the potential impact of state funding, a comprehensive compliance analysis in “attendance taking” was conducted. The results of this analysis highlighted those schools that KISD should closely monitor and support to improve compliance with attendance reporting requirements. The recommendations resulting from this audit helped to ensure that KISD operates efficiently and mitigates financial risk due to a lack of compliance in managing student data.
KISD board members were looking for an easy and dynamic way to access expenditure and staffing information during their budget discussions and approval processes without burdening the district staff with multiple requests for data and reports. Gibson developed a series of dashboards for budget analysis and key performance indicator monitoring for the KISD board members, giving them insight into the district’s planned spending and staffing. The budget analyses dashboards included analysis of the district’s global, functional, school, and administrative areas. The dashboards not only provide multi-year trend analysis for spending and staffing, but also have the capability of drilling down to the lowest available data points for in-depth analysis.
In 2019, KISD’s enrollment had been increasing annually and bus ridership had steadily outpaced enrollment growth over a five year period. To address this challenge, Gibson conducted an audit of the District’s transportation department to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of transportation services and to ensure compliance with all local, state, and federal laws. The scope of the audit included an evaluation of policies and procedures, staff and administrator certifications and qualifications, route and fuel efficiency, fleet tracking and maintenance, and budget and resource management. Gibson conducted its audit through interviews, site observations, bus ride-alongs, surveys, and district and state-level data analysis. Recommendations were made to the school board that led to improvements in compliance, organizational management and structure, operating efficiencies, and fleet management.
79,000 students
Gibson has served as the internal auditor for continuous improvement for Fort Bend Independent School District (FBISD) since 2013. The Board sought to expand the impact of its internal audit program by conducting department-level audits, and include every aspect of school system programs and operations. Under this engagement, Gibson has reported directly to the Board Audit Committee as required by state law. Below are examples of internal audit engagements for FBISD.
As part of its continuing contract to provide internal auditing services to FBISD, Gibson conducted an Academic Program Management Audit in 2019-20. Beginning in 2016, FBISD launched an entire curriculum re-write for all K-12 content areas. Additionally, the district implemented a new learning management system (Schoology) to house and deliver the new curriculum. The primary objective of the project was to assess the management and implementation of academic programming – with a focus on FBISD’s new initiatives – and ensure that resource utilization was being maximized. The scope of the audit focused on several key areas: effectiveness of instructional leadership and academic program management, quality of professional learning and supports, strategies around performance management, and an evaluation of FBISD’s curriculum management, instruction, and assessments. Gibson conducted its audit through data analysis, interviews, and surveys, delivering its recommendations to FBISD’s school board, which ranged from strategies for campus leaders’ development of teachers to change management practices to improve the implementation of district-wide initiatives.
Gibson has conducted three internal audits of FBISD’s construction management function since 2014. The first audit was of the entire construction management function. This audit was different from a typical internal audit in that it was “preemptive,” meaning the focus was more on evaluating the readiness of the district’s construction management function for a $484 million bond program. Procedures for this audit included the review of department organization, the bidding and award process, execution and administration of contracts, change order procedures, and budget control. The audit team evaluated applicable board policies and district procedures and controls for construction management, including management reporting. The audit also included a review of district processes to determine whether opportunities for efficiency improvements exist. Gibson performed limited audit testing of historical construction projects to better understand current processes and to corroborate information obtained through interviews and document reviews. Eleven recommendations resulted from this audit. The major recommendations included:
Gibson also conducted a follow-up audit of these recommendations. Gibson interviewed staff responsible for implementing the recommendations, and reviewed and verified the actions taken by FBISD in response to the recommendations. Gibson’s follow-up audit found that all of the recommendations made in the initial audit report had been fully implemented.
The purpose of the third audit was to monitor the district’s oversight of a third-party program manager, ensuring compliance with the District’s Design and Construction Procedures Manual, and adhering to the Program Management Plan. Using direct access to the Project Management Information System used by the third-party program manager and FBISD, Gibson audited program information, activities, and reporting directly from the system, all of which led to the development of five recommendations for the district. This audit helped FBISD proactively identify a campus that was at-risk for not opening by the beginning of the school year. Other recommendations focused on increasing progress reporting requirements for the third-party and improving internal controls over site observation activities and documentation.
The FBISD Board Audit Committee (BAC) was looking for a consolidated way to track the implementation status of various audits that have been performed as part of its internal audit program. Gibson developed a secure, web-based interactive dashboard for the FBISD board members so they are able to monitor the implementation status of all recommendations made in audits and follow-up audits. In addition, the Board members are able to access supporting documentation that the management has provided that provides evidence that recommendations have been implemented. Because the internal audit implementation dashboard consolidates all internal audit implementation status information into a single portal, BAC members are able to provide effective oversight of the internal audit program.
Conducted as a part of our long-term internal audit agreement with Hays Consolidated Independent School District, this audit focused on the management processes, school-level practices, automated tools, and the accountability mechanisms used to support the academic program at Hays Consolidated Independent School District.
We analyzed six major areas of academic management including curriculum implementation fidelity, student data analysis and use, instructional resources and support, teacher observation and evaluation, teacher professional development, and academic program management and decision-making.
Our approach involved the analysis and the corroboration of data from multiple sources including district-provided data, teacher surveys, interviews with central office staff, teacher and principal focus group sessions, and classroom observations.
Our recommendations included changes to academic program organization structure, decision-making framework, student data analysis, classroom observation protocols, lesson plans, teacher professional development, and procedures through which curriculum implementation is monitored.
In conjunction with the Austin Independent School District’s Internal Audit department, Gibson performed a comprehensive risk assessment for Austin Independent School District as part of the pilot phase of the partnership between the Texas Association of School Boards and Gibson.
The project included over 40 interviews with Austin Independent School District staff and members of the Board of Trustees. We assisted the Internal Audit department in developing its long-range audit plan and FY 2012-13 audit schedule. Austin Independent School District contracted further with Gibson to help the district transition its internal audit function from its pre-existing narrow focus towards an expanded scope of coverage that included all programmatic and operational areas of the school system.
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Research & EvaluationWe apply sophisticated statistical methods to empower educational leaders to make policy-relevant decisions. |
Gibson’s research and evaluation team empowers decision-makers with information essential to making policy-relevant decisions.
We use sophisticated statistical methods to examine policy-relevant and pressing programmatic questions related to academic programs, student interventions, school interventions, and general improvements for student educational outcomes. We’ve done this work across many important areas in education, including:
Afterschool programs
Career and Technical Education
Charter Schools
College and Career Readiness
District and School Turnaround
Early Childhood Education
Educator Effectiveness
Educator Professional Development
Employee Satisfaction
English Language Learners
Postsecondary Interventions
School Climate and Safety
School and Student Discipline
School to Workforce Pipeline
Special Education
Student Growth Models
State and Longitudinal Data Systems
Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
The ultimate goal for educational evaluation is to help educators and policy-makers gauge the effectiveness of programs, interventions, and initiatives.
A thorough program evaluation designed by Gibson will do more than that. We provide timely feedback during a program’s implementation, which will inform scale up, allow for mid-course corrections, or inform key programmatic decisions. This implementation information, in turn, can also help explain why or how desired program outcomes may or may not have been achieved.
High quality evaluation research can include any or all of the following qualitative and quantitative components:
How do parents in your district feel about the quality of education their children receive? How do students feel about school safety? Meaningful questions like these require collecting systematic input from a large population of individuals – students, parents, teachers, and school staff.
Researchers at Gibson can help organizations with any aspect of survey research, whether it be analyzing data already collected, designing an instrument for an organization to collect its own data, providing training on interpretation of results, or conducting all aspects of a survey project.
Key components of successful survey research include:
Our research team includes experts in advanced statistical methods and econometrics who perform extant data analysis for federal, state, and local school districts clients. And we want to do more than emphasize the data- we want to make it meaningful. We specialize in communicating our quantitative results in a way that they are easily understood and readily used for informing program implementation and policy decisions.
Gibson researchers use rigorous, evidenced-based statistical methods and are well versed in What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards for meeting evidence requirements.
Our research team includes experts in:
Educational leaders and policy-makers make important decisions every day that affect teaching and learning in their organizations. Our research team can provide training and assistance to enhance an organization’s capacity for collecting data they need, analyzing data they have, and appropriately interpreting results.
We can support and grow an organization’s own internal capacity or supplement that capacity. We can also provide one-time or ongoing training to help decision-makers or practitioners have data-driven conversations with staff to bring about positive change.
Many of the most important and actionable insights generated from the analysis of education data are obtained from the disaggregation of results by key subgroups. Our research team presents various levels of disaggregation by integrating sophisticated statistical analysis with visually compelling, customized reports.
These reports can be used to provide results at any level of disaggregation to show variability on key metrics or differences in perceptions by staff role.
For instance, a district-level snapshot of perceptions of key performance measures across schools is valuable for certain audiences, yet this aggregation can mask wide and important variability that exists from school to school, or even within a school. The same is true for objective measures of school and student outcomes, such as student test performance and patterns of postsecondary enrollment and completion.
Our research team has developed customized reports for a number of clients for a range of educational outcomes, including district-level reports of results from parent surveys, school-level reports of results from student surveys, and district-level academic performance and teacher credentialing reports for School Improvement Grant (SIG) schools.
Our research staff is committed to the principles of reproducible research, and while transparency and replication in applied research is essential, we are equally
motivated to build the capacity of our clients. That’s why, before funding expires, you will be equipped to continue a research project that we executed, if desired.
We provide detailed information that captures each phase in your research or evaluation project workflow. This documentation serves the dual purpose of providing a roadmap for replicating work in the future and for sharing with other researchers who may encounter common challenges.
We also develop manuals that provide statistical programming code along with explanatory annotations that can broaden the audience of researchers and practitioners who can meaningfully contribute to the dialogue surrounding the technical phases of research, and who can then apply the same rules and logic to similar datasets in different programming languages.
In collaboration with researchers from the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California, Gibson is currently examining the effectiveness of Knowledge in Action (KIA), a project-based learning approach to teaching Advanced Placement (AP) courses. This randomized controlled trial field experiment in 75 schools across five large U.S. school districts is investigating teachers’ KIA implementation and the impacts of KIA on students’ academic performance as measured by AP exam-taking and scores, critical thinking and problem solving skills as measured by the College and Work Readiness Assessment, and intra- and interpersonal skills and civic engagement as measured by a student survey.
The Gibson research team also works on various projects funded through the Department of Education. These studies span various states, including Texas, New Mexico, and Virginia, and are conducted in partnership with Regional Education Laboratories.
These projects include studies that focus on:
Click here to learn more about the Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest.
The Gibson research team, along with experts in bilingual/ESL education from American Institutes for Research (AIR), conducted an evaluation of Tyler’s bilingual/ESL program in an effort to identify areas for focused, targeted improvements.
This study included two main components:
Various strengths of Tyler’s programming were identified, and recommendations were made for program improvement, particularly in the areas of program model selection and implementation, as well as collaboration and coordination across departments, strategies for improving identification and placement, and ideas for attracting/developing qualified bilingual staff in needed areas.
Click here to read an article about the program.
Implemented in eight higher education institutions across the state, the CSSP had several goals: increase student completion of courses with traditionally high rates of failure and/or withdrawal, increase completion of degrees or certificates, improve faculty involvement in student success initiatives, and increase student participation in campus activities and events. Institutions that participated implemented early warning data systems, made changes to instructional approaches, increased contact between advisors/counselors and students, and increased faculty involvement in supporting student success.
Gibson employed a mixed-method design incorporating interviews and classroom observations to measure implementation, with quantitative analyses examining program outcomes. Results were promising, with CSSP students earning more credits on average than comparison students and demonstrating higher rates of persistence. Results varied by institution.
Our research team works with the NHDOE to annually survey two target populations for required state reporting:
On an annual basis, Gibson administers surveys to parents of over 30,000 students and to more than 3,000 exited students across the state. We use Rasch scaling methods on the NCSEAM Parent Involvement surveys to calculate results and to provide district-level reports in addition to statewide results. We also provide technical support to school districts in understanding and using results to make targeted improvement efforts.
Click here to access a statewide summary report from this project.
The AVID for Higher Education (AHE) program is designed to provide students with the supports needed to be successful in college. Our evaluation of the AHE program spanned three years and included an extensive assessment of program implementation. We made a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between program participation and key student metrics (persistence in college, cumulative grade point average, and cumulative credit accrual).
The study, which tracked student outcomes for three cohorts of students (fall 2012, fall 2013, and fall 2014), found small, yet statistically significant program effects. Click here to access the full report.
The Texas Students Using Curriculum Content to Ensure Sustained Success (SUCCESS) program offers state-funded access to computerized interactive mathematics and reading programs. These programs are provided by two vendors—Istation Reading (Istation) and Think Through Math (TTM)—to all Texas public school students in Grades 3-8.
We employed a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the Texas SUCCESS program that had been implemented in school districts across the state. Our design approach was quasi-experimental and explored the relationship between the intensity of Istation and TTM program usage and student outcomes on the 2013-14 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness
(STAAR®) exam.
Generally, a positive relationship was observed between the completion of online math lessons and gains on the 2013-14 STAAR® test; however, results were mixed depending upon the program and grade level.
To access the full report on SUCCESS visit the Texas Education Agency’s website:
http://tea.texas.gov/Reports_and_Data/Program_Evaluations/Reading_Math_Science_and_Technology_Initiatives/Program_Evaluation__Reading,_Math,_Science,_and__Technology_Initiatives/
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Data VisualizationWe develop advanced graphical and drill-down analysis tools to improve the transparency of educational organizations and the understanding of complex student, financial, and performance information. |
Visualizing data is a powerful tool for examining patterns, investigating changes over time, or exploring differences by groups of interest. Patterns, trends and abnormalities that might go undetected in a text-based format (spreadsheet) can be seen more easily with data visualization software. And the ability to drill down to lower levels of detail, selectively – based on the user’s desires – provides a level of transparency that is real, and meaningful.
Gibson can do this for you.
In simple terms, data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphic format. These visualizations can help decision-makers explore information in ways that quickly highlight important patterns, outliers, or commonalities.
The data visualization tool puts the power of analysis into the users’ hands. Data and performance measures can be analyzed in various ways, including trend, peer or benchmark analysis. This can be achieved for student, financial, staffing and operational data.
Several benefits can be attained from developing a data visualization tool:
Better Communication A data dashboard serves as a highly efficient and effective form of communication for the district, because it promotes a common base of information and language for educators and stakeholders to use. Additionally, it collects and presents information that stakeholders might have difficulty finding or connecting otherwise.
Better Accountability and Transparency Through data visualization tools, users can more easily find meaning and relevance in the “sea” of data, and thus meet the growing demand for accountability and transparency in education.
Demonstrate Efficiency and Effectiveness Data visualization allows for comparison across multiple datasets. This allows the school district to compare its data to standards and peer data, thus demonstrating the district’s efficiency and effectiveness. Additionally, these tools can help the school systems further develop a conceptual framework for data-informed leadership, than in turn can promote greater efficiency and effectiveness within the school district.
Our team has used data visualizations across various types of projects to help clients:
For Jefferson County Public Schools (JEFFCO) – the largest school district in Colorado – Gibson performed cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysis on the school system’s employee satisfaction survey data. We analyzed 10 years of employee data to examine differences between employee groups and trends over time for different areas of satisfaction – including constructs such as employee effectiveness, district diversity, supervision, compensation, and benefits.
In addition to providing JEFFCO with targeted recommendations to improve employee satisfaction in key areas, we developed an interactive data visualization tool for JEFFCO that enabled leadership to view survey results at the construct level or item level, and to slice mean scores by any of the demographic characteristics available for analysis.
Manor Independent School District hired Gibson to assist the district in analyzing its 2015-16 budget. Gibson helped the board to better understand Manor Independent School District’s expenditure and staffing levels and to better answer specific questions about budget line items by developing a budget analysis and data visualization tool.
In collaboration with the board, Gibson collected and validated the district’s expenditures and staffing data. Working with the board and senior leadership, we designed and developed a visualization tool that allowed users to analyze expenditure data in the aggregate and on a per student basis. The tool also allowed users to drill down according to every element of the district’s account code structure, including locally assigned codes.
Gibson worked with the School District of Lee County on a large-scale community survey, as well as a survey of secondary school students, assessing attitudes and opinions about student assignment approaches, the district’s programs and services quality, expanded program preferences, and parent involvement issues.
As a part of that project, Gibson developed an interactive data visualization tool that graphically presented results from the survey, allowing in-depth examination of survey responses based on any demographic characteristic of interest (e.g., ethnicity, gender, and income). With the click of a button users can choose to display survey results by respondent demographics to examine results that interest them.
For the Texas Association of School Business Officials, Gibson upgraded a comprehensive statewide student, financial, staffing, and demographic database – called the Financial Analysis and Comparison of Texas Schools (FACTS) – to include data visualization tools accessed through the Internet. This upgraded business intelligence tool – eFACTS+ – provided multi-dimensional online analytical processing functionality in a fully accessible web-based environment, which helped school systems’ analysts easily analyze performance trends via a researcher friendly interface fit for the casual and power user.
In the years following the upgrade, Gibson provided further eFACTS+ enhancements as well as training.