Although the Every Student Succeeds Act sets the parameters for parents and families to be involved in their children's education, there are no specified guidelines on how that involvement should be designed to best impact student achievement. The purpose of this study was to compare Grade 3-5 students' mean Milestones test scores in English…

In this study, we use microdata from 12 Florida county-level school districts and a regression discontinuity design to examine the effects of early grade retention on the short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes of English learners. We find that retention in the third-grade substantially improves the English skills of these students, reducing the…

This study applied four frameworks from academic literature in the areas of leadership, change process, 21st-century skills, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) project-based learning (PBL) to understand the various factors providing for success and participation of a school in the national science fair initiative (Programa…

Amargosa Valley School in Nevada could be considered representative of almost any preK-8 school that serves a large proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students and is focused on turning around persistently low achievement. Like other schools supported by federal School Improvement Grants, Amargosa is beginning to implement a reform plan…

This groundbreaking study is the first ever to examine the achievement of high-performing students over time "at the individual level". It poses--and seeks to answer--this straightforward question: Do students who outscore their peers on standardized achievement tests remain at the top of the pack year after year? Put differently, how many "high…

This dissertation focuses on a key challenge facing developing countries intent on enhancing their human capital base--namely, the issue of quality. One of the chapters evaluates the effectiveness of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative in Nepal's primary and lower-secondary schools. Although the OLPC program is being heavily promoted in…