About me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Research and Evaluation Methodology Program at the University of Florida.  Previously, I was an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods at the University of Alabama. 

My research interests include the development and application of experimental and quasi-experimental methods (e.g., Multilevel RCT, IV, RDD, DID, etc.) to issues in education and policy studies. Currently, my methodological work focuses on statistical power analysis for longitudinal experimental designs and multilevel randomized cost-effectiveness trials. My substantive work encompasses research on class size effects, teacher effects, school effectiveness and school improvement, the effectiveness of online learning and teaching, and the effects of interim assessment on student achievement. 

My research has been supported by over $7 million in funding as principal investigator, co-principal investigator, or investigator, with more than $2.6 million in support of methodology research. Much of that support has come from grants from NSF and IES. I received an NSF Faculty Early Career award in 2024.

I received my Ph.D. with a dual major in Measurement and Quantitative Methods and Educational Policy (specialization in Economics of Education​) at Michigan State University.  

You can find my UF profile here https://education.ufl.edu/faculty/li-wei/ .  I also serve as an affiliate faculty member of the Education Policy Research Center at UF (https://education.ufl.edu/eprc/ ) and a committee member of the Chinese Education Finance and Policy (CEFP) Association (https://cefp2020.wixsite.com/website/about). 

Email: wei.li@coe.ufl.edu 

What is new?

I am thrilled to share that my NSF CAREER proposal has been funded! It's a five-year project with a total budget of $1.24 million.  This project will develop new methods and tools for statistical power and sample size computations in the design of longitudinal experimental and quasi-experimental studies. You can view the award abstract at https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2339353.

I joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness (JREE) on June 1, 2023. JREE is the official Journal of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). It is dedicated to publishing rigorous studies of 1) the effects of educational policies, practices, and programs; 2) the theories, contexts, and mechanisms that underlie such effects; and 3) methodological advances in educational research. 

Our paper entitled "Experimental Design and Statistical Power for Cluster Randomized Cost-Effectiveness Trials " (with Nianbo Dong, Rebecca Maynard, Jessaca Spybrook, and Ben Kelcey) was accepted by the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, the flagship journal of The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.  

One project entitled "Scaling Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI) to Serve Students Impacted by COVID-19: Digital Implementation of an Effective Intervention" was funded by IES recently, where I will serve as a Co-PI and will lead the design and analysis of the cost study through a quasi-experimental design.