Massachusetts passed its first charter school law in 1993. Since then, the cap on the number of these public schools has been raised several times: in 1997, 2000, and 2010. Today, the state educates 40,200 students in 78 charter schools, and 32,600 students are on wait lists. This November, Bay State residents will vote by referendum, via Ballot…

Effective intervention delivery requires ongoing assessment to determine whether students are learning at the desired rate. Intervention programs with embedded assessment procedures (i.e., assessment that occurs naturally "during" the process of delivering intervention) can potentially enhance instructional decisions. However, there is…

Austin ISD is one of 21 US urban school districts participating in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA). AISD students consistently perform well on the 4th and 8th grade reading and math assessments. This research brief summarizes 2015 results. A separate supplemental report also was…

Effect sizes are commonly reported for the results of educational interventions. However, researchers struggle with interpreting their magnitude in a way that transcends generic guidelines. Effect sizes can be interpreted in a meaningful context by benchmarking them against typical growth for students in the normative distribution. Such benchmarks…

Policymakers view parental involvement (PI) as a crucial component of school reform efforts, but evidence of its effect on student achievement is equivocal. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort dataset, we examined the long-term impact on student- and school-level achievement of three types of school-based PI: PI to…

Postsecondary transition programs have emerged to prepare adult learners to enter college with either limited or no remediation work needed in developmental education. This article examines the results of a pilot study, in which participants (ages 20 years and older who held GED® credentials or high school degrees) received accelerated instruction…

Project Partnerships Achieve Literacy (PAL) South Africa was designed to transform teachers' pedagogical practices in literacy instruction in an under-resourced school and, by doing so, improve the reading achievement of foundation phase students (Grades R-3). Sociocultural and situative theories of literacy and learning frame the study. To gauge…

The achievement levels from 2007 to 2016 in the state of New Mexico demonstrate an educational system that is failing its Hispanic, American Indian, and English learner students. During this period of time, close to 30% of Hispanic students were proficient or above in reading, math, and science, and close to 25% of American Indian students were…

Longitudinal trends revealed an increase in the prevalence of HISD students with disabilities compared to all students in the district from the 2017-2018 to the 2018-2019 academic year (7.2% to 7.5%). Students with disabilities were more likely to be male and Hispanic with a learning disability. An over-representation of African American students…

The COVID-19 pandemic has redoubled attention to the challenges families face in making sure their children are fully prepared and supported in their journey through school. This first of three Quality Counts 2021 installments provides grades and scores for the nation and each state on a range of factors setting students up for success in school…

Professional development and learning has a long history in seminar-like models, as well as in the more educator-personal delivery approaches. The question is whether an intentionally coordinated, integrated combination of the two PDL approaches will have best impacts for educators as quantified in improved student performance. Contrasts between…

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands conducted this study using data on public high schools in Puerto Rico from national and territory databases to compare methods for identifying beating-the-odds schools. Schools were identified by two methods, a status method that ranked high-poverty schools based on their current observed…

Acting out behaviors is a hindrance to learning across the country. The school-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) model is a behaviorally-based systems approach to addressing problem behaviors in our school today. The problem this study is designed to address is the issue that student misbehaviors and disruptions cause a loss of valuable…

Achieve 3000 was implemented during the 2013-2014 school year. This program was designed to increase student Lexile levels. Specifically, Achieve 3000 was targeted at students in the tenth grade in selected schools. There were 5,023 tenth-grade students from 17 participating high schools who utilized the web-based program. Of these 5,023 students,…

In the 2013-2014 school year, the High-Dosage Tutoring (HDT) Program served approximately 1,698 students at nine AISD schools. This report summarizes the third year of implementation and outcomes.