The Opt-Out of testing social movement gathered a significant following in New York state after the change to assessments based on the newly adopted Common Core State Standards in 2013. Parents and educators in other states joined, but most states moved to hamper these protests. However, Colorado state instead allowed parents to choose whether to…

Over the past two decades, efforts to support school improvement have transitioned from top-down prescriptive approaches to more collaborative and flexible approaches. A number of studies have investigated the effects of these newer "turnaround programs" on student and school outcomes. In Colorado, two recently implemented turnaround…

This manuscript explores teacher beliefs about technology in three 9th grade English classrooms. Examining these teachers' pedagogical uses of technology and their discussion of technology with their students, this study highlights how teacher beliefs can render technology invisible. Teachers demonstrated consistent assumptions that technology…

The goal of this study was to further evaluate the impact of IXL on learning outcomes in math and ELA. Using a quasi-experimental design with matched treatment and control groups, we analyzed data from 296 public schools in Colorado during the 2018-2019 school year. The analysis of IXL Math included 186 schools (93 treatment, 93 control), and the…

In 2016, McREL and the University of Southern California (USC) were awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund (Award Number U411C150011) to develop a translation of the identity-based motivation (IBM) in vivo program "Pathways to Success" to a digital platform to deliver IBM to middle and…