School Improvement Grants (SIGs) exemplify a capacity-building investment to spur sustainable changes in America's persistently lowest-performing schools and stimulate the economy. This study examines both short- and longer-term effects of the first two cohorts of SIG schools from four locations across the country. Dynamic…

Charter schools have become a widely used alternative to traditional public schools, both nationally and in the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast Region. They play an increasingly important role in state reform efforts. South Carolina stakeholders--including the South Carolina Department of Education, the Public Charter School…

The purpose of this report was to determine which Mississippi public schools perform better than could be predicted, considering demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Additionally, this study identified profiles of schools within Mississippi, or groups of schools with similar socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. This study…

This article reports results from a study of teacher beliefs among a panel of English and language arts teachers at three universities as the pre-service teachers entered methodological coursework and internships. Using a new assessment tool, the Developmental Instruction Assessment Battery (DIAB), along with a discrete choice task and one-on-one…

This paper provides the first population-based evidence on how much standardized test scores vary among public school districts within each state and how segregation explains that variation. Using estimates based on roughly 300 million test score records in math and English Language Arts (ELA) for Grades 3 through 8 from every U.S. public school…

Recent research on multiple measures of teaching effectiveness has redefined the role of in-classroom observations in teacher evaluation systems. In particular, most states now mandate that teachers are observed on multiple occasions during the school year, and it is increasingly common that multiple raters are utilized across the different rating…

Most U.S. school districts (88 percent) offer credit recovery courses or programs for students. In rural states such as Montana, online credit recovery options are especially popular because they allow schools to serve students in remote areas throughout the year, across a range of subjects, and with few additional resources (Carver & Lewis,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of microblogging as an authentic real-world technology in a middle school classroom in response to the 2010 Department of Education's call to provide students with more relevant digital experiences. The non-equivalent control group, pretest-posttest design study was used to determine if…

Students' initial eagerness and excitement for learning to read are evident when they enter primary grades. Their levels of enthusiasm for reading diminish through elementary (Eccles, Wigfield, Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993; Mazzoni, Gambell, & Koreamaki, 1999) and middle school (McKenna & Kearn, 1990; Oldfather & McLaughlin, 1993)…

Nationwide, the increasing popularity of e-books is undeniable; sales of e-books increased an astounding 4,456% over a 5-year period. Researchers, Miranda, Johnson, and Rossi-Williams, determined that e-readers have a positive impact on students' desire to read. This study attempted to determine if the use of institution issued e-readers would…

Every Classroom, Every Day (ECED) is a set of instructional improvement interventions designed to increase student achievement in math and English/language arts (ELA). ECED includes three primary components: (a) systematic classroom observations by school leaders, (b) intensive professional development and support for math teachers and…

Executive functioning (EF) is a strong predictor of children's and adolescents' academic performance. Although research indicates that EF can increase during childhood and adolescence, few studies have tracked the effect of EF on academic performance throughout the middle school grades. EF was measured at the end of Grades 6-9 through 21 teachers'…

This study examined the contribution of classroom format on teaching effectiveness and achievement in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. Secondary data analyses of the Measures of Effective Teaching database included 464 US classrooms. Classrooms were defined as self-contained if a generalist teacher provided instruction on all subjects…

Districts are increasingly making personnel decisions based on teachers' impact on student-achievement gains and classroom observations. In some schools, however, a teacher's practices and their students' achievement may reflect not just individual but collaborative efforts. In other settings, teachers' instruction benefits less from the insights…

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…