Many students who enter community college are deemed underprepared for college-level courses and are referred to developmental (remedial) education courses to build their math, reading, or writing skills. These students often struggle in developmental courses and in college more broadly. To help them, the City University of New York (CUNY)…

In 2011, the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) received an Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant through the U.S. Department of Education. UAF applied for the grant to expand the predominantly rural-serving Alaska Statewide Mentor Project (ASMP) to urban settings. ASMP is a professional development initiative that supplies fully released, highly…

The recent wave of test-based accountability reforms has negatively impacted the provision of K-12 arts educational experiences. Advocates contend that, in addition to providing intrinsic benefits, the arts can positively influence academic and social development. However, the empirical evidence to support such claims is limited. We conducted a…

Diplomas Now is a partnership of three national organizations--Talent Development Secondary, City Year, and Communities In Schools--collaborating in an effort to transform urban secondary schools so that fewer students drop out and more graduate ready for postsecondary education and work. With the goal of a continuous system of support through…

This study investigated the efficacy of the INSIGHTS into Children's Temperament intervention in supporting the academic development of shy kindergarten and first-grade children. INSIGHTS is a temperament-based intervention with teacher, parent, and classroom programs. The participants included 345 children from 22 low-income, urban elementary…

Financial incentives for teachers to increase student performance is an increasingly popular education policy around the world. This paper describes a school-based randomized trial in over two-hundred New York City public schools designed to better understand the impact of teacher incentives on student achievement. I find no evidence that teacher…

Background/Context: Billions of dollars are spent annually on professional development (PD) for educators, yet few randomized controlled trials (RCT) have demonstrated the ultimate impact PD has on student learning. Further, while policymakers and others speak to the role schools should play in developing students' civic awareness, RCTs of PD…

This paper describes a series of school-based randomized trials in over 250 urban schools designed to test the impact of financial incentives on student achievement. In stark contrast to simple economic models, our results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the rewards are given for inputs to the educational production…

Background: School-based social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs can influence not only SECD but also academic-related outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of one SECD program, Positive Action (PA), on educational outcomes among low-income, urban youth. Methods: The longitudinal study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized…

Evaluated the effectiveness of Book Buddies, a volunteer tutor program designed to improve young elementary students' reading and writing skills, using diverse older adult tutors and a rigorous experimental versus control group design in a high-poverty, urban setting. Overall, students participating in Book Buddies were significantly stronger in…