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…

"Research says…" a lot. But how does research come to say anything? One way is by having teachers open their classroom doors to a researcher. In this article, we share the stories of two teachers who opened their doors to the authors' research and were glad they did. The teachers contrast this experience to other research experiences in…

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide initiative offering publicly-funded vouchers to enroll in local private schools to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250 percent of the poverty line. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012.…

Some form of a short interrupted time series (ITS) is often used to evaluate state and national programs. An ITS design with a single treatment group assumes that the pretest functional form can be validly estimated and extrapolated into the postintervention period where it provides a valid counterfactual. This assumption is problematic. Ambiguous…

Objectives: Group-randomized designs are well suited for studies of professional development because they can accommodate programs that are delivered to intact groups (e.g., schools), the collaborative nature of professional development, and extant teacher/school assignments. Though group designs may be theoretically favorable, prior evidence has…

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana, there is a growing concentration of charter schools. The Recovery School District (RSD) has oversight of the majority of these schools. To explore charges from community advocates that RSD charter schools restricted admission and provided inadequate services for students with disabilities, the following…

PCI Education conducted a three-year longitudinal study to determine the comparative effectiveness of the "PCI Reading Program" ("PCI") for students with severe disabilities as implemented in Florida's Brevard Public Schools and Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The primary question addressed by the study is whether students…

The authors of the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" anticipated that a majority of school districts or schools would not be able to attain state and national achievement standards without assistance. Consequently, the Act created a major tenet known as Supplemental Educational Services (SES) programs to improve the learning outcomes of…

Developing the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 Assessment Frameworks represents an extensive collaborative effort involving individuals and expert groups from more than 60 countries around the world. The document contains three frameworks for implementing TIMSS 2007--the Mathematics Framework, the Science…