Charter school effects remain uncertain. Small lottery studies on high-performing charters produce impressive results, but large observational studies on the full range of charter schools are less encouraging. To make matters worse, these observational studies that aim for representativeness are based on only switchers, a small and…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has periodically published reports using results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to compare the proficiency standards states set for their students. Since standards vary across states, the results of the various state assessments cannot be used to directly compare…

These are the technical notes for "Mapping State Proficiency Standards onto the NAEP Scales: Results From the 2017 NAEP Reading and Mathematics Assessments." The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has periodically published reports using results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to compare the…

The current system of education focuses not on preparing students for life success, but on preparing students for academic success. The problem that this study will address is that at-risk students living in poverty combined with limited teacher emotional intelligence, has resulted in low student academic growth regarding mathematics and reading.…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the effect of the yearly principal attrition rate on the state accountability ratings of 144 traditional public high schools in Mississippi from 2015-2019 and the proficiency rate of high school students in Mississippi in mathematics, reading, science, and history as evidenced on the…

This research brief examines the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement and progress toward academic recovery. Using data from 6.7 million U.S. public school students currently in grades 3-8, the study examined academic gains in the 2022-23 school year relative to pre-pandemic years. It also tracked the gap in…

Students' abilities are multidimensional; teachers and schools shape students' cognitive skills, most often captured by test scores, but they also shape students' non-cognitive skills such as character, tolerance, effort, and conscientiousness. This study reviews the evidence indicating disconnects between test scores and non-cognitive skills from…

Increased use of achievement scores to measure the impact of school principals on student outcomes has led to increased attention on how best to generate estimates of principal effects. This study joins others in the field in attempting to estimate how K-12 principals affect test score outcomes of students in their schools. Toward this end, this…

We exploit within-teacher variation in the years that math and reading teachers in grades 4-8 host an apprentice ("student teacher") in Washington State to estimate the causal effect of these apprenticeships on student achievement, both during the apprenticeship and afterwards. While the average causal effect of hosting a student teacher…

Charter schools are the most popular alternative to traditional public schooling in the United States. The majority of research indicates positive effects of charter schools on student performance in traditional public schools. Most studies use the share of charter school students enrolled as a measure of the competitive pressure of charter…

This report evaluates the impact of intensive student support services provided by Communities in Schools of Kalamazoo (CISK) to elementary students of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS). These intensive services typically follow a case-management format and include activities related to academic assistance, basic needs, enrichment/motivation, and…

The increasing number of children who struggle with reading and writing has become a significant challenge for the nation's public schools. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the relationship between which intervention a student gets and ELA scores of the online reading program i-Ready compared to the Word Generation program in…

With the 2022 midterm elections behind us and 2023 state legislative sessions ahead, policymakers must shift their time and attention from winning reelection to addressing the perfect storm brewing in education. Three significant challenges paint a grim picture for students and public schools unless policymakers step in to help: catastrophic…

Remote learning programs were rapidly implemented throughout the COVID-19 pandemic during school closures. We drew on an ongoing longitudinal study of a cohort of children in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana to survey children (N = 1,844), their caregivers, and teachers to examine learning experiences during the ten months of school closures in…

There is growing attention to personalizing education to provide students with more flexibility in their education experiences and more time to master academic content. To personalize education, Legacy High School in Bismarck Public Schools, North Dakota, has implemented a schedule that allows students to choose how they use a portion of the…