The return to in-person schooling post-COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased pressure on educators to ensure academic success for students. This study examines the school climate of 40 elementary and middle schools in California's Central Valley and its impact on academic performance and attendance, comparing pre-pandemic (2018-2019) with…

Newsela contracted with LearnPlatform by Instructure (LearnPlatform), a third-party edtech research company, to examine the relationship between Newsela ELA usage and outcomes for students. LearnPlatform designed the study to satisfy Level II requirements (Moderate Evidence) according to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The study included…

In October 2023, the California Department of Education released test scores for all students in Grades 3-8 and 11 for the 2022-23 school year. These results represent an opportunity to analyze whether and to what extent student learning has rebounded after the dramatic declines in scores resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and related school…

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced teaching and learning in dramatic ways. Educators have made significant efforts to facilitate learning in dynamically changing formats, and students have experienced a very difficult time to learn in non-traditional environments and settings. This study focuses on participation rates of 5th grade students on a…

This study examines how emergent bilinguals seek help in language arts and how peers respond to their requests for help. Using 6 months of naturally occurring student talk in a U.S. fourth grade classroom, this article shows that (a) emergent bilinguals more frequently use general requests than specific requests to obtain help, (b) only 41% of…

Adolescents with disabilities have great difficulty with academic content in middle school, and their teachers have difficulty teaching them to understand and use academic language. We taught teachers of 6th grade students with Learning Disabilities, over half of whom were also English Language Learners (ELL), to implement about 15 minutes of…

This brief applies value-added models to student surveys in the CORE Districts to explore whether social-emotional learning (SEL) surveys can be used to measure effective classroom-level supports for SEL. The authors find that classrooms differ in their effect on students' growth in self-reported SEL--even after accounting for school-level…

In this multi-year study, we taught English/Language Arts teachers of students with learning disabilities in middle school to incorporate 15 min of daily vocabulary activities with students in their intact special education English/Language Arts classes. During Year 1, teachers taught 48 words to their sixth grade students, who learned and…

Resilience, as defined by the literature, deals with the relationship between individuals and their environment. This capstone project followed elementary students over a three-year period to investigate and determine the impact a co-teaching intervention model has on resilience, grade-point average (GPA), state testing scores in English language…

In this multi-year study, we taught English/Language Arts teachers of students with Learning Disabilities in middle school to incorporate 15 minutes of daily vocabulary activities with students in their intact special education English/Language Arts classes. During Year 1, teachers taught 48 words to their sixth grade students, who learned and…

The purpose of this research study was to evaluate iPersonalize, a gamified instructional approach developed by Fullerton School District (FSD) in California to encourage student engagement and promote achievement. An instructional approach is considered gamified when it incorporates computer game elements to augment existing classroom,…

This study evaluated the efficacy of the Word Learning Strategies (WLS) supplementary program to improve elementary students' vocabulary skills and reading comprehension. The study used a multi-site cluster randomized, experimental design, which randomly assigned 92 4th grade classrooms (n=2558 students) from two cohorts to a treatment or control…

The purpose of this research study was to evaluate iPersonalize, a gamified instructional approach developed by Fullerton School District (FSD) in California to encourage student engagement and promote achievement. An instructional approach is considered gamified when it incorporates computer game elements to augment existing classroom,…

One district, South Bay Union School District, devises and executes a comprehensive strategy that includes training for district staff, teachers and coaches, including using PLCs and professional development in the implementation of Common Core English language arts standards.

The research featured in this paper is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, which is focused on producing research that informs continuous improvement in the CORE districts as well as policy and practice in California and beyond. In this report, the authors used data from multiple interim assessments to examine how the rate of student…