This study examined the effectiveness of Zipfian frequency at facilitating the acquisition of English prenominal past participles. Chinese middle school students (N = 103) were randomly assigned to a sequenced Zipfian frequency (SZF) group, a random Zipfian frequency (RZF) group, a balanced frequency (BF) group, and a control group. A mixed…

The goal of the Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP) project, a development project funded by the U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) grant program, was to develop a model of shared responsibility among families, teachers, and communities in rural areas as collective support for student success in and preparation for advanced…

The main focus of this design research was on students' mathematical thinking and skills and on their understanding of mathematical concepts and methods. The mathematical content our project starts with is the introduction of integers. For this content new learning environments have been developed, implemented and evaluated. An important question…

In this study, we examined the relationship between teachers' attitudes towards professional development and school performance in the state accountability system using the 2013 Kentucky Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) survey data and the 2013 school accountability profile data from the Kentucky Department of Education. We were…

Recent federal legislation, such as the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 and the "Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA)" of 2002, has insisted that educational evaluations use rigorous research designs with quantitative outcome measures. In particular, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of…

Successful school reform is dependent on the quality of decisions made by educational leaders. In such decision making, educational leaders are charged with using sound research findings as the basis for choosing school reform initiatives. As part of the debate regarding the usability of various evaluative research designs in providing information…

A cluster-randomized trial (CRT) relies on random assignment of intact clusters to treatment conditions, such as classrooms or schools (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). One specific type of CRT, a multi-site CRT (MSCRT), is commonly employed in educational research and evaluation studies (Spybrook & Raudenbush, 2009; Spybrook, 2014; Bloom,…

The purpose of the present review was to evaluate the quality of the research and evidence base for representation of problems as a strategy to enhance the mathematical performance of students with learning disabilities and those at risk for mathematics difficulties. The authors evaluated 25 experimental and quasiexperimental studies according to…

In this study, methodology and theory were linked to explicate the nature of education practice within schools facing exceptionally challenging circumstances (SFECC) in Trinidad and Tobago. The research design was an iterative quan>QUAL-quan>qual multi-method research programme, consisting of 3 independent projects linked together by overall…

There are situations within middle school settings where measurements of students and teachers are used for high-stakes decisions. For example, student performance is used as an indicator of teacher quality or determines student eligibility for particular types of support services. Given the high-stakes nature of these types of assessments,…

This study evaluates the impacts and costs of the Reading Partners program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in under-resourced elementary schools. The evaluation uses an experimental design. Students were randomly assigned within 19 different Reading Partners sites to a program or control…

The purpose of this research study was to explore how parents in a large school district in Florida perceive the referral process leading to their children placement in Special Education. Participants in the study were 12 parents of special needs students whose children were, at the time of the study, receiving Special Education related services…

Background and purpose: Research in formative assessment often pays close attention to the strategies which can be used by teachers. However, less emphasis in the literature seems to have been paid to study the application of formative assessment designs in practice. In this paper, we argue that a formative assessment design that we call…

In 2003, Chicago launched "Double-Dose Algebra," requiring students with pretest scores below the national median to take two periods of math--algebra and supplemental coursework. In many schools, assignment to Double Dose changed the peer composition of the algebra classroom. Using school-specific instrumental variables within a…

One approach to reducing persistent racial/ethnic achievement gaps is to tackle their social-psychological dimensions, including the negative consequences of stereotype threat and other identity threats in school. Initial research suggested that a particularly promising approach is brief self-affirmation writing exercises for 7th grade students;…