Educators rely on a conglomeration of assessment instruments to appraise, measure, monitor, and document evidence of students' academic readiness, learning progressions, acquisition of interdisciplinary knowledge, and extensive educational needs. The Mississippi Academic Assessment Program for Mathematics (MAAP-M) and the i-Ready Assessment…

Teacher self-efficacy, the belief teachers have that they can make a difference for their students or have a positive impact on their students' academic careers, has been studied for years. Very little is known about teacher self-efficacy in school librarians, however. The following study examined the difference in school librarians' teacher…

This convergent mixed methods study sought to explore the effects of engineering design challenges (EDCs) on middle school students' achievement. Data was collected from four middle schools from an urban school district in Maryland. Two of these, Group A, included teachers with experience with EDC design and implementation; the other two schools,…

Currently, there is a paucity of research concerning the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform's Schools to Watch national school improvement program. Of the handful of existing studies, very few have examined or addressed student learning or achievement. In this this study we systematically collected and analyzed data from the 34…

This publication marks the fourth edition of the Context and Performance (CAP) Report Card for Michigan elementary and middle schools, published every two years since 2013. The goal is to compare Michigan schools' relative performance by factoring in the role student poverty plays in affecting academic achievement. The CAP Report Card uses…

Imagine Math® is a standards-aligned, adaptive, interactive online mathematics program designed to supplement in-class instruction for students. This evaluation report examined the fidelity of implementation of Imagine Math® and the associations between its use and student achievement in Houston Independent School District (HISD) secondary schools…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of Uncommon Schools in a turnaround setting. Uncommon was awarded a 2016 grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to support TurnNJ, a project intended to support Uncommon's whole-school turnaround efforts in Camden and Newark, New Jersey. The study…

Background: The growing interest in principal effectiveness as a means of improving teaching and student learning has led to a focus on the quality of principal preparation programs (PPPs) with calls for the adoption of PPP accountability systems similar to those of teacher preparation programs. Objective: The purpose of the present study is to…

Standardized testing pressure sometimes discourages schools from broadly implementing experiential learning opportunities. However, some K-12 schools are challenging the trend with greater commitment to learning by experience. STREAM (science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, mathematics) school is a project-based program providing students…

This report represents the third in a series designed to measure the academic performance of Michigan elementary and middle schools, and the first of the series to use results from the M-STEP assessment. Similar report cards were published in 2013 (ED560064) and 2015 (ED568656), based on different but overlapping years of scores on the defunct…

Recent work has shown that Boston charter schools raise standardized test scores more than their traditional school counterparts. Critics of charter schools argue that charter schools create those achievement gains by focusing exclusively on test preparation, at the expense of deeper learning. In this paper, I test that critique by estimating the…

Critics of charter schools in New York City, America's largest school district, often allege that charters score better on standardized tests, on average, than traditional public schools because charters "cream-skim" (i.e., attract) the brightest, most motivated, students. Yet this accusation neglects the fact that not all traditional…

New York City's public specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous, college preparatory education to the city's most academically talented students. Though immensely popular and highly selective, their policy of admitting students using a single entrance exam has raised questions about diversity and equity in access. In…

This is the Mackinac Center's fourth school report card and covers elementary and middle schools. A similar report card was published in 2013, and this edition includes two years' worth of new data. A unique characteristic of this report card is that takes into consideration the "context" of a school when assessing its performance.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the type of grade configuration and racial climate of a school on the academic performance and discipline of middle school aged students. Specifically, this study was concerned with the predictive power of the type of grade configuration (stand-alone middle school vs. non-transition…