In this report, RAND researchers investigate one specific issue that may contaminate utilization of COVID-19--era school-aggregate scores and result in faulty comparisons with historical and other proximal aggregate scores: changes in school composition over time. To investigate this issue, they examine data from NWEA's Measures of Academic…

School officials regularly use school-aggregate test scores to monitor school performance and make policy decisions. After the U.S. Department of Education offered assessment waivers to all 50 states in 2019-2020, many educators and policymakers advocated for assessment programs to be restarted in the 2020-2021 school year to evaluate the state of…

WestEd has made substantial progress on the evidence of promise study for Clark County School District's (CCSD) 2017 Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) grant. WestEd collected the necessary student-level test score, course credit, and demographic data from CCSD for the study to identify statistically significant or substantively important…

Background: Reading is a vital skill, key to school success, necessary for employment, and essential for functioning in everyday life. Many attempts to increase literacy have focused on schools, yet "out of school" factors have a substantial impact on student learning (Clabaugh, 2008). One non-instructional factor that may be part of…

New research, using data from 7 million students in grades 3-8 in 25,000 schools who took MAP Growth reading and mathematics assessments between 2020-21 and fall 2022, continues NWEA's ongoing research agenda examining how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected student achievement in reading and math. At the start of the 2022-23 school year, we…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Progress toward Pandemic Recovery: Continued Signs of Rebounding Achievement at the Start of the 2022-23 School Year" (ED627355). The two main research questions…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Learning during COVID-19: An Update on Student Achievement and Growth at the Start of the 2021-22 School Year." The goal of this brief is to summarize student achievement…

This brief is a continuation of NWEA's ongoing research agenda focused on understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected student reading and math outcomes. This report builds on previous findings to examine students' academic progress at the start of the third school year impacted by the pandemic. The goal of this brief is to summarize…

In our report, "Learning during COVID-19: Initial findings on students' reading and math achievement and growth," we examine how school shutdowns impacted student achievement at the start of the 2020-21 school year. Using data from schools all over the country, we've built these visualizations to explore three key questions: (1) How have…

In 2013-14, Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the nation's third-largest school district, implemented several changes to the policies governing its pre-kindergarten (pre-k) application and enrollment process. Two policy changes that were central to the school district's strategy focused on increasing access to full-day pre-k for high-priority student…

This report presents findings from the annual evaluation of the MacPhail Intensive Strings Program, specifically at Ascension Catholic School in Minneapolis. It includes satisfaction and outcome data for the 2020-21 school year. [For the 2019-20 report, see ED619376.]

This report presents findings from the annual evaluation of the MacPhail Intensive Strings Program. It includes satisfaction and outcome data for the 2019-20 school year.

The purpose of the present study was to gather summative and formative data related to the implementation of Zearn Math during the first year of a two-year study. The sample included students in a large urban school district comprised of predominantly African American (58%) and Hispanic (28%) students. Roughly 90% of students are economically…

The research featured in this paper is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, which is focused on producing research that informs continuous improvement in the CORE districts as well as policy and practice in California and beyond. In this report, the authors used data from multiple interim assessments to examine how the rate of student…

Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners--defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test--at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the…