National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data have indicated that many secondary students lack sufficient literacy skills, and that students who receive free/reduced lunch, students from rural settings, and students with disabilities are particularly low-performing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). Despite some…

The article examines the results of two quasi-experimental studies of the implementation and impact of the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), an intervention designed to support secondary teachers' transition to Common Core State Standards in English language arts. The first study examines LDC implementation by eighth-grade social studies and…

Interest has been growing in the role of students' attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions as key factors that can support or inhibit student success. A large body of emerging evidence, including multiple randomized controlled trials, shows that interventions that target academic mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs about the nature of ability and the…

Nationally, two-thirds of high school students are unable to read and comprehend complex academic materials, think critically about texts, and synthesize information from multiple sources, or communicate what they have learned. Without a substantial change in their academic literacy, U.S. high school students face continued academic problems in…

Student behavioral engagement is a key condition supporting academic achievement, yet student disengagement in middle and high schools is all too common. The current study used a randomized controlled design to test the efficacy of the My Teaching Partner-Secondary program to increase behavioral engagement. The program offers teachers personalized…

This study of 32 public secondary school English teachers in the state of Alabama and of 477 students in these teachers' participating classes, employed teacher and student surveys and early- and late-in-course samples of timed narrative and persuasive writing. As predicted, NWP teachers wrote more extensively than comparison teachers, and the…

The Science-in-CTE pilot study tested a curriculum integration model that enhanced the science that oc-curs in CTE curricula. The study replicated the National Research Center for Career and Technical Ed-ucation's (NRCCTE) Math-in-CTE experimental research design (Stone, Alfeld, & Pearson, 2008) with applied science in secondary agricultural…

I analyze the longer-run effects of a college-preparatory program implemented in inner-city schools that included payments to eleventh- and twelfth- grade students and their teachers for passing scores on Advanced Placement exams. Affected students attended college in greater numbers, were more likely to remain in college beyond their first year,…

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the Reading Apprenticeship professional development program on several teacher and student outcomes, including effects on student learning. A key part of the study was the use of an enhanced performance assessment program, the Integrated Learning Assessment (ILA), to measure student…

Students entering high school face many new academic challenges. One of the most important is their ability to read and understand more complex text in literature, mathematics, science, and social studies courses as they navigate through a rigorous high school curriculum. The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northwest conducted a study to…

The goal of this study was to test the effectiveness of WestEd's Reading Apprenticeship (RA) professional development program on teacher practices and student learning. The professional development is designed to teach high school teachers how to integrate subject-specific literacy instruction into their regular curricula. The CRESST researchers…

This report describes a classroom artifact measure and presents early findings from an efficacy study of WestEd's Reading Apprenticeship (RA) professional development program. The professional development is designed to teach high school teachers how to integrate subject-specific literacy instruction into their regular curricula. The current RA…