Background: Performance with fractions has been a weak point in U.S. education for decades and has not improved in recent years (Siegler, 2017). High School math teachers frequently rate their students' knowledge of fractions as "poor" and see this lack of foundational knowledge as one of the top barriers to students mastering algebra…

Background: In fourth grade, students must solve single- and multi-step word problems during classroom instruction and on standardized tests. The majority of mathematics items on high-stakes assessments are word problems; thus, word-problem proficiency is necessary to demonstrate successful mathematics performance. However, many students are…

Background/context: Student heterogeneity is a persistent and fundamental challenge in all school systems. In many countries, including Norway, politicians and actors within the educational sector have increased the use of additional teachers, teacher assistants, and special education teachers to respond to this challenge (Bonesrønning, Iversen…

Introduction: Increasing evidence has shown that student mobility is negatively correlated with individual students' and schools' academic performance (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004; Lara, Mizala, & Repetto, 2011; Sun & Pan, 2014). However, the negative impact may be due to the switching behavior or it could be only a side effect of…

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…

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) has seen the number of English learner students in grades K-12 increase in recent years, even as overall enrollment has decreased. In addition, the English learner student population has grown more diverse in race/ethnicity, country of origin, and native language. The increasingly diverse English…

Background/Context: Regression discontinuity (RD) designs are used for policy and program evaluation where subjects' eligibility into a program or policy is determined by whether an assignment variable (i.e., running variable) exceeds a pre-defined cutoff. Under a standard RD design with a continuous assignment variable, the average treatment…

Ethnoracial inequality in educational achievement and attainment is a long-standing feature of the American education system. For example, national reading assessments show that White fourth graders scored nearly a standard deviation higher than Black or Hispanic students on average in 2015 (NCES, 2015). The measurement and analysis of differences…

The purpose of this paper is to showcase new research that seeks to provide guidance on the heterogeneity of treatment effects by utilizing the variance of demographic differences in state assessments. This study is focused on a simple randomized block design where students are nested within schools, and within each school students are randomized…

In this presentation discussed in this brief abstracted report, the author presents about an ongoing partnership with the Philadelphia School District (PSD) to implement and research the Ongoing Assessment Project (OGAP). OGAP is a systematic, intentional and iterative formative assessment system grounded in the research on how students learn…

The effect of student mobility on student outcomes has garnered much attention by researchers and policy-makers over the past few decades. The extant research relies on annual tests, typically measured each spring, to estimate the effect of structural moves on student achievement. The current literature does not allow researchers to evaluate…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been developed in response to the criticism that students in the U.S. are graduating from high school without being college and career ready and that they are falling behind their counterparts in other countries in key subject areas. In this work, the authors report the results of an efficacy study that…

Although some research-based educational practices have shown promise, many fail to be implemented at a scale that affects more than a small proportion of children. Further, research on interventions for young children includes mixed results, with most documenting "fadeout" of effects after several years, but some showing lasting…

In the context of an experimental trial, the authors examined variability in treatment and control teachers' use of several "Responsive Classroom" (RC) practices to predict students' 4th grade academic achievement. Further, they examined the extent to which use of the "RC" practices is differentially important for subgroups of…

The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in the use of education data to improve classroom instruction and raise student achievement. Schools and districts face important challenges in implementing increased data use for instructional improvement. One key challenge is the need for teachers and administrators to have "data…