This study explores the impact of professional learning communities on student achievement in a small school setting. Aaron Hansen's book, "How to Develop PLCs for Singletons and Small Schools," offered a guide for arranging vertical, grade-level teams with one teacher per grade level at one private, K-8 school. The faculty engaged in…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the progress being made to close the current achievement gap in Kentucky. Guiding the study is the following research question: Which districts are closing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps at rates that exceed expectations? The authors assess districts' progress in closing racial and…

"Literacy Design Collaborative" aims to help teachers improve their effectiveness in the classroom with a focus on supporting their literacy instruction. "Literacy Design Collaborative" provides professional development, coaching, and resources to support teachers to work collaboratively in their schools to create and use…

"Literacy Design Collaborative" aims to help teachers improve their effectiveness in the classroom with a focus on supporting their literacy instruction. "Literacy Design Collaborative" provides professional development, coaching, and resources to support teachers to work collaboratively in their schools to create and use…

"Literacy Design Collaborative" aims to help teachers improve their effectiveness in the classroom with a focus on supporting their literacy instruction. "Literacy Design Collaborative" provides professional development, coaching, and resources to support teachers to work collaboratively in their schools to create and use…

Background: Prior research shows that teachers' working conditions are important for teacher and student outcomes, such as teacher retention and student achievement. Because National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) can be effective in the classroom and as instructional leaders, they are well positioned to create favorable working conditions for…

The purpose of this paper is to showcase new research that seeks to provide guidance on the heterogeneity of treatment effects by utilizing the variance of demographic differences in state assessments. This study is focused on a simple randomized block design where students are nested within schools, and within each school students are randomized…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

Randomized experiments are often considered the strongest designs to study the impact of educational interventions. Perhaps the most prevalent class of designs used in large scale education experiments is the cluster randomized design in which entire schools are assigned to treatments. In cluster randomized trials (CRTs) that assign schools to…

Educators and policymakers have set a goal that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. A substantial body of research supports the idea that the path to college and career readiness begins well before middle and high school. In an earlier policy report, ACT examined the percentage of academically far off track…

Background: Cluster-randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

Differences in reading comprehension were examined in students with disabilities after use of three reader modification types. Participants (n=10) conveniently selected from two school districts were students grades three through eight reading on a third grade level that received a reader as a modification in their Individualized Education…