The unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states (e.g., Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee) calls for better understanding of the relation between their bilingual vocabulary skills and English reading achievement. The current study focused on school-age Spanish-English DLLs (N = 60) in…

Although the majority of elementary school teachers cover all major subjects in self-contained classrooms, a growing number of teachers specialize in teaching fewer subjects to higher numbers of students. We use administrative data from Indiana to estimate the effect of teacher specialization on teacher and school effectiveness in elementary…

This study investigates the academic outcomes of a special education student cohort in the state of Indiana placed in high and low inclusion settings. Student scores in these two settings from the Indiana State Test of Educational Progress (ISTEP+ English/Language Arts and math) were compared from fourth grade in 2014 through the eighth grade in…

Randomized controlled trials in education are necessary to keep pace with the evidence-based practices demanded by schools and the nation. In this study, kindergarten students in a school district in Indiana were randomized on the class level: The experimental condition consisted of students utilizing a computer-adaptive reading program for 15…

Learning to read is a critical but often challenging academic task for young children. In the current study, we explore the relation between children's reading affect--particularly anxiety--and reading achievement in the early years of reading acquisition. We hypothesized that reading anxiety would relate to reading achievement across the school…

Researchers explored how 13 states in which policymakers have adopted an A-F school letter grade accountability system performed on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) post-policy implementation. Researchers found mixed results, with approximately half of these 13 states increasing achievement post-policy, and the other…

Background: Over the last twenty years, retention has increased in popularity with policymakers who are concerned with student achievement and aim to end social promotion (i.e., the practice of advancing a student to the next grade level although they have not yet met the academic expectations of their current grade level). Despite calls to expand…

Research on college admissions shows that all students tend to benefit from overmatching, but high-status students are most likely to be overmatched, and low-status students are most likely to be undermatched. This study examines whether mismatching takes place when students are sorted into classrooms in middle school. Given prior research on…

We used multilevel analysis to examine the predictive validity of scores from the Framework for Teaching (FFT), the observation measure used most often to evaluate teachers' instruction. We investigated how well 81 kindergarten teachers' FFT scores for eight reading and eight mathematics lessons observed throughout the year predicted students'…

Although the majority of elementary school teachers are in self-contained classrooms and teach all major subjects, a growing number of teachers specialize in teaching fewer subjects to higher numbers of students. We use administrative data from Indiana to estimate the effect of teacher specialization on teacher and school effectiveness in…

A small but growing cadre of schools and districts across the nation are turning to interventions rooted in brain science to complement or replace core curricula. Such programs target a related set of cognitive processes, known as executive function (EF), that are key to learning. Executive function skills are essential for planning, executing,…

This study investigated the impact of a computer-adaptive reading program, Waterford Early Learning (WEL), in an elementary school in Indiana. The study investigated how educational technology, specifically computer-assisted instruction (CAI), would impact the literacy scores of kindergarten students when paired with traditional instruction:…

We use data from a large-scale, school-level randomized experiment conducted in 2010-2011 in public schools in Indiana. Our sample includes more than 30,000 students in 70 schools. We examine the impact of two interim assessment programs (i.e., mCLASS in Grades K-2 and Acuity in Grades 3--8) on mathematics and reading achievement. Two-level models…

Charter schools represent an increasingly important form of school choice in the United States. Charter schools are public schools, with a difference. Compared to traditional public schools, they are exempted from some of the state laws and regulations that govern traditional public schools. In this way, parents come to have a greater number of…

We use data from a large-scale experiment conducted in Indiana in 2009-2010 to examine the impact of two interim assessment programs (mCLASS and Acuity) across the mathematics and reading achievement distributions. Specifically, we focus on whether the use of interim assessments has a particularly strong effect on improving outcomes for low…