This rubric was developed for the analysis of intervention programs against the criteria of implementing the four recommendations and accompanying action steps presented in the IES Practice Guide "Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9" for the Adolescent Literacy Intervention Selection Tool (A-LIST). Each item in…

Year 4 continued the Adolescent Literacy Intervention Selection Tool (A-LIST) development work from Year 3 and focused on reviewing the degree to which selected adolescent interventions support evidence-based recommendations. To inform that review, Region 1 Comprehensive Center (R1CC) and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary…

Education is seen as a resource at a global level but is currently considered to be in crisis in many parts of the world. This constitutes a significant drawback in terms of humanity's prosperity and well-being since education is the key not only to an educated workforce but also to humane, collaborative, and caring societies. Even within this dim…

The public education system in Massachusetts enjoys a reputation of being "first" in the nation. This ranking is owed, in full or in part, to the performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments. NAEP is also called "The Nation's Report Card," as it is designed to discern trends in state…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction that met Curriculum Associates' recommended usage levels on ELA achievement, as measured by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) ELA assessment. This study compared the ELA achievement growth in the 2020-21 school year of students who…

This study finds that, breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago. This descriptive analysis is designed to…

The purpose of this paper is to showcase new research that seeks to provide guidance on the heterogeneity of treatment effects by utilizing the variance of demographic differences in state assessments. This study is focused on a simple randomized block design where students are nested within schools, and within each school students are randomized…

Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states' elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. This report explores the relationship between racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps in New England metropolitan areas and two factors associated…

In recent decades, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has implemented reforms aimed at improving and controlling the quality of the teaching workforce in public schools. Among those reforms are tests for licensure that assess both general and content-area specific knowledge, requirements for ongoing teacher professional development, and procedures…

This Framework builds upon the foundation of the 2010 Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for Mathematics as well as versions of the Massachusetts Mathematics Framework published since 1995. The current Framework incorporates improvements suggested by Massachusetts educators after six years of experience in implementing the 2010 standards in their…

By coincidence or not, Massachusetts, Illinois and Virginia created civic education task forces not long after national test results showed a dismal understanding of the subject matter across all grade levels. Results of the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed just 25 percent of all testtakers in grades 4, 8 and 12 demonstrated…

We used self-report surveys to gather information on a broad set of non-cognitive skills from 1,368 eighth graders. At the student level, scales measuring conscientiousness, self-control, grit, and growth mindset are positively correlated with attendance, behavior, and test-score gains between fourth grade and eighth grade. Conscientiousness,…

Michigan has a problem. By several measures, the achievement of students attending its K-12 educational system has not kept pace with other states. Although Michigan's student achievement has improved over the past decade, the improvement has been modest, and achievement in many other states has easily surpassed that in Michigan. Furthermore,…

This Framework is built upon the foundation of the 2003 and 1997 "Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Frameworks." Based in research on effective practice, it represents the contributions of members of the History and Social Science Curriculum Framework Review Panel, scholars who served as Content Advisors, and the more…

Randomized experiments are often considered the strongest designs to study the impact of educational interventions. Perhaps the most prevalent class of designs used in large scale education experiments is the cluster randomized design in which entire schools are assigned to treatments. In cluster randomized trials (CRTs) that assign schools to…