Teaching children too many words during a lesson reduces retention. The amount of new information a student can successfully rehearse and recall later is called acquisition rate (AR), which has been reliably measured with students in first, third, and fifth grades. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability of assessing AR for sight…

Computerized game-based assessment (GBA) system for screening reading difficulties may provide substantial time and cost benefits over traditional paper-and-pencil assessment while providing means also to individually adapt learning content in educational games. To study the reliability and validity of a GBA system to identify struggling readers…

Current mathematics curricula and assessments emphasize students' ability to communicate mathematical reasoning in writing. Limited research exists, however, on what mathematics writing (MW) is and how to assess the quality of MW. Therefore, based on our definition of MW construct, we explored 4 approaches to scoring MW: (a) holistic rubric…

Most studies of test-based promotion policies focus on measuring the effect of retention (being left back) on later student outcomes, and the evidence is fairly mixed. However, test-based promotion policies do not only affect the students who are retained. Presumably, they also affect students and schools as they try to improve reading performance…

Large-scale learning assessments can be used to generate performance and contextual data on student learning outcomes. They can be national, regional, or international; school based or household based. The UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO) has conducted a qualitative study to explore both how and why learning…

Background/Context: In 2010, Reading Recovery was awarded a $55 million Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This five-year grant supported the expansion of Reading Recovery in more than 1,400 schools in over 30 states, and provided intervention to over 80,000 students. Although a multi-site randomized…

This study evaluated the feasibility of the Knowledge, Language, and Inquiry (K.L.I.) intervention, designed to support Grades 3-5 multilingual students classified as English learners (ML-ELs) in building content knowledge, language skills, and reading comprehension through inquiry-based small-group instruction. Feasibility was examined across…

This report evaluates the impact of intensive student support services provided by Communities in Schools of Kalamazoo (CISK) to elementary students of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS). These intensive services typically follow a case-management format and include activities related to academic assistance, basic needs, enrichment/motivation, and…

Background: Children's participation in cooking activities at home may have positive effects on diet quality. In Japan, schools are the primary site for food education, which includes cooking. Very few studies have assessed the impact of school-based cooking programmes on children's participation in cooking activities at home. Objective: The…

Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) Science for use with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) assessments are available for the 2016-17 school year. These new assessments measure student growth toward understanding of the multidimensional NGSS performance expectations. This report presents MAP Science for use with NGSS by presenting and…

Children's poor social-emotional functioning has been an increasing concern prior to and amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Childhood and adolescence are critical stages of life where they acquire key cognitive and social-emotional skills that shape their future mental health. When a student's social-emotional health suffers, so do their relationships,…

We review the value of cost-effectiveness analysis for evaluation and decision making with respect to educational programs and discuss its application to early reading interventions. We describe the conditions for a rigorous cost-effectiveness analysis and illustrate the challenges of applying the method in practice, providing examples of programs…

This study describes the use of a game-based writing environment (GWE) to increase textual cohesion in students' writing and improve their writing attitude. The participants were 113 third-grade students in Taiwan; the study was conducted over two semesters. A GWE was used for the experimental group (n = 56), and a conventional writing environment…

Students' development of conceptual understandings is a central goal of mathematics education (CCSS-Mathematics, 2010). Such a challenging, yet ambiguous, goal cannot be achieved without empowering teachers with the knowledge and tools critical for their ability to adequately convey the content, and assess and interpret students' performance. This…

A recent qualitative study by a team of researchers looked into how grade-level teams of teachers are thinking about causes and strategies based on looking at student performance data. What is interesting in these findings is how infrequently teachers attribute student results to instruction -- just 15% of the time. Teachers in this study were…