Helping faculty develop high-quality instruction that positively affects student learning can be complicated by time limitations, a lack of resources, and inexperience using student data to make iterative improvements. We describe a community of 16 faculty from five institutions who overcame these challenges and collaboratively designed, taught,…

Objective: Quantway is a Carnegie Math Pathways initiative, which redesigns the content, pedagogy, and structure of traditional developmental mathematics courses to simultaneously tackle traditional barriers to student success and support a broad range of developmental students in achieving their mathematics potential. Specifically, Quantway is a…

The main purpose of this study was to see the effect of a Balanced Literacy program on the students' academic achievement (the 8th Grade NYS ELA exams) between the years of 2005, 2006, and 2007. This study analyzed the effects of Balanced Literacy on student achievement scores at the 8th grade level. In addition, the effect of teacher's training…

This paper provides rigorous evidence (for 12,130 participants in a series of naturally occurring randomized lotteries) that a large-scale high school reform initiative (New York City's creation of 100+ small high schools of choice between 2002 and 2008) can markedly and consistently increase high school graduation rates (by 9.5 percentage points…

The best hope for accelerating much needed improvement in student achievement is by using a range of pedagogical and technological innovations that deliver personalized learning to each student. The authors examine three school initiatives across the country that are using technology and new teaching methods successfully to drive student…

Efforts to retain underrepresented minority (URM) students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have shown only limited success in higher education, due in part to a persistent achievement gap between students from historically underrepresented and well-represented backgrounds. To test the hypothesis that active learning…

This paper estimates the impact of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) on school attendance and other educational outcomes in the following school year for a large sample of low-income high school students. The program provides summer jobs and training to youth aged 14 to 21, and due to high demand allocates slots through a…

This study used a randomized controlled trial to determine whether students, assessed by their community colleges as needing an elementary algebra (remedial) mathematics course, could instead succeed at least as well in a college-level, credit-bearing introductory statistics course with extra support (a weekly workshop). Researchers randomly…

As the adoption and execution of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have steadily increased, the debate community is presented with an opportunity to be more forward thinking and sustainable through the translation to curriculum planning and next-generation assessment as a movement towards Performance-Based Assessments. This paper focuses on…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that many US students are deficient in core knowledge in geography, civics and current events. In this paper, a professor of social studies methods describes an action research project developed to assess and improve teacher candidates' knowledge in these areas. The article explains how data…

This article uses a regression discontinuity approach to study the influence of New York City's school grading policy on student math and English language arts (ELA) achievement. We find evidence that students in schools receiving a failing grade realized positive effects in English in the 1st year of sanction, but we find no statistically…

This paper examines the embedded librarian program and its impact on the information literacy skills of community college students at Queensborough Community College (QCC). It is a collaboration between an embedded librarian and an English instructor at QCC. The study participants are QCC students enrolled in seven sections of English 101 and…

In today's rapidly changing global economy, "21st century skills" means much more than proficiency in basic academic subjects. One of the most important noncognitive competencies for student success is conscientiousness, which encompasses traits such as perseverance, self-regulation, resilience, and responsibility. Researchers have found…

The Index of Learning Styles (ILS) generates reliable data. Its ability to characterize learning preference has been validated. However, the ILS has had very limited application in biology education. In 2009, students in an introductory biology laboratory completed the ILS. Overall academic performance (2009) was negatively associated with…

This study hypothesizes that course passing rates in remedial mathematics classes can be improved through early identification of at-risk students using a department-wide midterm, followed by a mandated set of online intervention assignments incorporating immediate and elaborate feedback for all students identified as "at-risk" by their…