Data-based decision-making has been a frequently used policy and practice intervention used in schools to help inform the decision-making processes of educational practitioners, with the aim of improving student outcomes. Interim benchmark assessments are designed by commercial test developers to support educators in this framework. In fact, the…

Admission professionals have come to recognize the potential of widening the admission criteria beyond standard academic measures-- such as high school transcripts, grade point average, and summative scores on college entrance exams--to understand student contexts, mindsets, and "college-ready" competencies, such as higher-order thinking…

Over the last few decades, there has been an increase in the number of large federally funded transdisciplinary programs and initiatives. Scholars have identified a need to develop frameworks, methodologies, and tools to evaluate the effectiveness of these large collaborative initiatives, providing precise ways to understand and assess the…

COVID-19 upended schooling across the United States, but with what consequences for the state-level institutions that drive most education policy? This paper reports findings on two related research questions. First, what were the most important ways state government education policymakers changed schools and schooling from the moment they began…

This study aims to determine the degree of public school teachers' skills regarding action research. The study sample included public school teachers from the Kalamazoo metropolitan area, US (n=20), and Tabuk, Saudi Arabia (n=30). The researchers adopted a descriptive approach to address the study's open-ended questions; Statistical Package for…

The purpose of this article was to offer guidance to educators in evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, and most effective uses of commercial reading assessment suites. We provide three resources to help educators who are responsible for making instructional decisions in reading using formal screening, benchmark, interim, and progress-monitoring…

This paper reports an investigation into the psychometric properties of the COR-Advantage1.5 (COR-Adv1.5) assessment tool, a criterion-referenced observation-based instrument designed to assess the developmental abilities of children from birth through kindergarten. Using data from 8534 children participating in a state-funded preschool program…

Over the past two decades, U.S. states have widely adopted early literacy policies. These policies have shown short-term success in enhancing K-3 literacy skills. However, the reasons behind their widespread adoption and the factors driving their success are poorly understood. This three-paper dissertation focuses on Michigan's Read by Grade Three…

This article presents a case study of a decolonized curriculum development in the Art History programme at the small liberal arts institution Kalamazoo College (Michigan, USA). It discusses the curriculum plan, methods for learning, assessment and potential applications for this approach beyond the case study. Paying attention to questions about…

Physicists, physics students, and community members come together and engage with physics content through various forms of informal education programming. Our prior work has shown that the landscape of informal physics programs in the United States has a variety of formats, audience demographics, and content. Informal physics programs have many…

Although educators frequently use assessment to identify who needs supplemental instruction and if that instruction is working, there is a lack of research investigating assessment that informs what instruction students need. The purpose of the current study was to determine if a brief (approximately 20 min) task that reflects a common middle…

"Measure, Use, Improve! Data Use in Out-of-School Time" shares the experience and wisdom from a broad cross-section of out-of-school time professionals, ranging from internal evaluators, to funders, to researchers, to policy advocates. Key themes of the volume include building support for learning and evaluation within out-of-school time…

This study builds on a 2019 Fordham Institute report that examined the relationship between charter school enrollment share--the share of students in a community who enroll in a charter school--and the average achievement of all the students in that community, including those in traditional public schools. Like its predecessor, this report seeks…