The majority of states have laws in place that require teacher evaluations and many states are tying teacher evaluations and teacher effectiveness to tenure and dismissal policies. Historically, the teacher evaluation process has been conducted by the school principal and has commonly been disconnected from the teacher development processes that…

The "Forum Guide to Data Literacy" is designed to help education agencies understand and build data literacy skills among various stakeholder groups such as administrators, teachers, students, parents and other caregivers, school board members, legislators, and community groups. This resource defines and discusses the importance of data…

Adaptive tutoring systems often model student knowledge in ways that break away from a "one size fits all" approach to learning. Nonetheless, the strengths of these systems can often be limited, as knowledge representations are not easily interpreted by teachers, which make these systems difficult to integrate into pedagogical practices.…

All students confronted obstacles during the 2020 school year, but for students learning English, the year presented a distinct set of difficulties. Even as English Learner (EL) students shared in the common struggles around internet-based instruction, the tools to measure their progress in becoming proficient in English became largely unavailable…

These are the technical appendices for the report, "Surveying the Landscape of California's English Learner Reclassification Policy." The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) developed the survey of district reclassification policies in consultation with English learner (EL) experts and several large school districts, as well as…

Educational leaders are increasingly expected to use school climate data to improve outcomes and promote equity for all learners, including in California where school climate is included in state accountability policy. In this study, beliefs towards school climate assessment were explored in a sample (n=298) of California superintendents using a…

This multiple case study explored the relationship between school district and school site environments and the character of instructional coaching. Across the US billions of dollars are spent every year on professional development for teachers, and over the last few decades, coaching, as a form of professional development, has grown in…

Prior work has shown that students' self-reported levels on social-emotional measures predict achievement levels and gains, but we have little evidence on whether within-student changes in self-reports on social-emotional surveys are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use large-scale data from the…

Textbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways mathematics textbook adoption practices…

This current study is an exploratory, secondary data analysis of a survey assessing training, district support, and confidence of school administrators when it comes to special education teacher evaluation. The present study specifically examines (a) if the influence of district training regarding special education teachers influences the…

As parents, communities, educators, and policymakers continue to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning in America, many have turned to recently released results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP measures what students know and what they can do in several tested subjects, including reading,…

Project Tomorrow and BrainPOP have collaborated on the development of this new "Education Leadership Brief: Examining the Evolving Digital Responsibilities of School Principals" to examine specifically the evolving digital responsibilities of the school principal today resulting from the sudden shift to digital learning. This examination…

This practitioner brief is one in a series highlighting concrete ways that education leaders can increase educational equity by building supportive learning environments that meet all students' social and emotional needs. The introductory brief to this series suggests that changes at three levels of the education system are needed to promote…

In 2006-2007, California revised its English language proficiency (ELP) assessment, the California English Language Development Test (CELDT), which resulted in more stringent criteria and higher cut scores for meeting proficiency. Using regression discontinuity designs and a difference-in-differences approach, this study examines the effects of…

This report offers a framework for districts to use in their preparation to provide quality instruction through distance and blended models. In the wake of COVID-19, "teaching as usual" will be neither possible nor sufficient to meet students' needs because California's schools have experienced disruptions to each aspect of the…