Background/Context: Billions of dollars are spent annually on professional development (PD) for educators, yet few randomized controlled trials (RCT) have demonstrated the ultimate impact PD has on student learning. Further, while policymakers and others speak to the role schools should play in developing students' civic awareness, RCTs of PD…

We describe the development and initial evaluation of the efficacy of "We Have Skills!" (WHS), a video-based social skills instructional program for early elementary school students. The components of WHS were designed to be scientifically sound, maximally useful to elementary school teachers, and effective in increasing students' social…

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of 2 brief school-based interventions targeting the homework problems of adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)--the Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) intervention and the Completing Homework by Improving Efficiency and Focus (CHIEF) intervention, as implemented by…

This Striving Readers evaluation examined the impact of a targeted intervention for struggling adolescent readers in participating schools. This study was conducted in nine high schools in nine school districts serving large percentages of at-risk students in Kentucky. The targeted intervention for struggling readers was the Kentucky Cognitive…

High school dropouts face daunting odds of success in a labor market that increasingly rewards education and skills. This report presents very early results from a rigorous, independent evaluation of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, an intensive residential program that aims to "reclaim the lives" of young people ages 16 to 18…

First-year students experience academic, social, and emotional adjustments as they transition to college. First-year experience courses support students in this transitional phase by helping them integrate into the campus environment and by teaching them college-appropriate learning strategies. This study explored the role that participation in a…

This study examined factors that relate to the persistence of first-generation undergraduate students in a 4-year public university in the Southeastern United States. Results were analyzed from a 2011 two-part survey: CARES-I (College Assessment of Readiness for Entering Students-Intent) and CARES-A (College Assessment of Readiness for Entering…

We examined the differential effects of the social cognitive model of sequential skill acquisition (SCM intervention) and the self-regulated strategy development model (SRSD intervention) for writing. One hundred and twenty-one 5th- and 6th-grade Spanish students with learning disabilities (LD) and/or low achievement (LA) were randomly assigned…

This report summarizes the findings from a national evaluation of mentoring programs funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program. The impact evaluation used an experimental design in which students were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Thirty-two purposively selected School Mentoring Programs and…

Writing is a complex task. Its development depends in large part on changes that occur in children's strategic behavior, knowledge, and motivation. In the present study, the effectiveness of an instructional model, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), designed to foster development in each of these areas, was examined. Adding a peer support…

Two experiments involving 60 fifth graders and 40 fourth graders investigated how goal setting and progress feedback affect self-efficacy and writing achievement. The process goal with progress feedback had the greatest impact on achievement outcomes. Self-efficacy was highly predictive of writing skill and strategy use. (SLD)