This qualitative study investigated the teacher evaluation systems currently in place in diocesan high schools in California and the ways in which those systems could be improved. Diocesan schools are private, Catholic institutions that do not subscribe to federal regulations when creating their evaluation instruments. Measuring effective teaching…

While researchers and practitioners have long known that differentiating formative feedback (FF) is a requisite for creating more equitable learning opportunities for students, less is known about how teachers plan for, enact, and reflect on differentiated FF dialogues with students individually, in small groups, or as a whole class--a lens on…

Many school change efforts aim to foster conditions for the development of students' twenty-first century skills in an equitable and comprehensive way, but methods to measure the frequency and quality of opportunities that students receive in school are lacking. In this study, we describe the design, testing, and initial evaluation of a…

The proliferation of an expanding English second language community has led to an increasing number of English language learner (ELL) students enrolling within the California public schools system. This research study sought to understand how teacher self-efficacy affected ELL assessment outcomes and the role professional development had in…

Practical educational assessment tools for adolescents champion student voice, use technology to enhance engagement, highlight discrepancies in school experience, and provide actionable feedback. We report a series of studies that detail an iterative process for developing a new school climate assessment tool: (1) item generation that centres…

California's school system is under tremendous long-run fiscal pressure; allocating resources efficiently is therefore paramount. Economic analysis--making sure districts and schools are spending their budgets wisely--is the method used to identify effectiveness and efficiency. This method responds to the question educational professionals face:…

The notion that teacher quality impacts student achievement is widely accepted. How to best define, measure, and improve teacher quality continues to be debated by teacher unions and state legislators. Teacher evaluation studies have focused on isolated elements of the system. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the current…

This memo, which is the first in the series, explores some of the assessment for learning practices that the initiative is supporting at Del Lago Academy of Applied Sciences, a small public high school in Escondido, California that educates a diverse group of scholars to develop industry-specific skills and expand their social networks and access…

States use their accountability systems to identify low-performing schools, which can receive added support and are expected to improve. Alternative schools serve students whose needs are not met in a regular school. They often serve at-risk students who are struggling academically or behaviorally. Given this unique population, the Government…

Because the pandemic exacerbated chronic absenteeism in many parts of the country, the need to understand how schools can improve student attendance has never been greater. Accordingly, this study breaks new ground by examining high schools' contributions to attendance after accounting for individual students' prior absenteeism and other…

A huge portion of what we know about how humans develop, learn, behave, and interact is based on survey data. Researchers use longitudinal growth modeling to understand the development of students on psychological and social-emotional learning constructs across elementary and middle school. In these designs, students are typically administered a…

Educators aim to equip students with learning strategies they can apply when approaching new problems on their own. Teaching design-thinking strategies may support this goal. A first test would show that the strategies are good for learning and that students spontaneously transfer them beyond classroom instruction. To examine this, we introduce…

Relying on teachers' assessments for the information currently provided by standardized test scores would save instructional time, better capture the true abilities of diverse students, and reduce the problem of teaching to the test. A California high school is implementing standards-based reporting, ensuring that teacher-issued grades function as…

This memo, which is the fifth in the series, highlights the ongoing work of the Leadership Public Schools (LPS) Network--a network of three high schools in Northern California serving about 1,500 students with 98% identifying as people of color and 80% qualifying for free and reduced lunch. LPS, driven by their belief that students are serious and…

The academic achievement, bilingual proficiency, and sociocultural competence of exiting middle school students was analyzed to provide dual-language program stakeholders with evaluative information for local control funding and accountability planning. Informed by equity as a guiding principle of additive bilingualism, researchers used…