The authors describe an impact study of Classroom Assessment for Student Learning (CASL), a widely used professional development program in classroom and formative assessment. Researchers randomly assigned 67 elementary schools to receive CASL materials or continue with regularly scheduled professional development. Teachers in CASL schools formed…

District-led, dramatic change efforts in failing schools--including turnarounds and school closures--often face strong resistance from families and communities. Resistance may be based on years of tension and distrust between districts and communities, failed past school improvement efforts, or a lack of understanding about the chasm between a…

Despite uncertainty related to student outcomes resulting from remediation (Bettinger & Long, 2009), eleven states mandate remedial education through common placement testing and standardized cutoff scores rather than permitting individual postsecondary institutions to establish remediation guidelines. Colorado, in particular, offers an…

Because digital devices and the Internet have become so essential, digital inequality can exacerbate educational and economic inequality as well. Therefore, it is critical to understand how low- and moderate-income families in the U.S. are engaging digital technologies and how they perceive the opportunities--and potential risks-- that these…

The data in this survey offer a unique perspective from low- and moderate-income families with school-age children in the United States. They reveal many of the nuances and complexities of digital life among lower income families today. Because lower-income parents are not usually the focus of studies on technology and learning, this report offers…

Place-building theory, originally developed to assess corporate social responsibility, explains to what degree an organization values and invests in its geographical and social location. Different lines of inquiry--descriptive, evaluative, and prescriptive--elucidate how the organization values place, which in turn suggests its type, its…

Through the transformation of undergraduate STEM courses, the Colorado Learning Assistant Program recruits and prepares talented STEM majors for careers in teaching by providing them with early, sustained teaching experiences. The research reported here compares teaching practices of K-12 teachers who served as learning assistants (LAs) as…

Policymakers are recognizing that Pennsylvania has fallen behind in providing equitable access to high quality early childhood education. Governor Tom Wolf ran on a campaign promise of universal pre-k access and proposed an unprecedented budget increase for early childhood programs in 2016. In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney has made pre-k a…

This brief combines original research and policy analysis to examine a key issue that is often overlooked in debates about the proliferation of new technologies, education, and equity: the potential for digital media investments to support a promising learning pathway for children in our nation's increasingly diverse, low-income families. A…

To successfully participate in today's global economy, young people must graduate high school with the skills and competencies that allow them to pursue further study and meaningful work. Yet the data around successful transition from high school to higher education, and then to the completion of a degree, show some alarming trends. In 2007, 70.5%…

Higher education often operates under old rules -- rules that continue despite an increasingly diverse student population and improved understanding of human behavior and choice. Under these old rules, fewer than half of students graduate on time, if at all, and troubling equity gaps exist based on income, race, and ethnicity. It is time for new…

As the focus on student success and completion intensifies on campus, community college leaders know the only way to stay viable is to change the culture of their institutions. With state and federal coffers in perpetual free fall, that means leveraging existing resources to spur reforms. Some colleges have attempted to do this through the…

As community colleges across the country strive to improve completion rates and serve a growing number of students returned home from war, the need for programs that meet the unique needs of veterans--including job training, social acclimation, referral programs for mental health counseling, and academic tutoring, to name a few--is more pressing…

This is a study of teachers' authentic professional learning at a public school in Poudre School District in northern Colorado. At Polaris Expeditionary Learning School, teachers and administrators have developed a form of school-based instructional rounds referred to herein as PLC rounds (professional learning community rounds). In PLC rounds,…

In 15 years of working together, the authors have learned valuable lessons about practice change though partnership. One of the most important was their ability to discover shared values and interests. For years, their commonality was masked by different vocabulary and unique identities; they lacked the relationships needed to actively engage with…