With more than 290 Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs across 131 high schools, the NYC Department of Education (NYCDOE) oversees one of the largest and most diverse CTE systems in the country. In the last year, NYC's mayor and NYCDOE leadership have made a number of new investments in Career and Technical Education. The Research…

In contrast to prior federally mandated school reforms, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states more discretion in reforming their lowest performing schools, removes requirements to disrupt the status quo, and does not allocate substantial additional funds. Using a regression discontinuity design, we evaluate a state turnaround…

The current teacher workforce is younger, less experienced, more likely to turnover, and more diverse in preparation experiences than the workforce of two decades ago. Research shows that inexperienced teachers are less effective, but we know little about the effectiveness of teachers with different types of preparation. In this study, we classify…

This study reports on an evaluation of the "Reading Partners" program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in underresourced elementary schools. Established in 1999 in East Menlo Park, California, the mission of "Reading Partners" is to help children become lifelong readers by…

In 2006, the National Center for Postsecondary Research, of which is MDRC is a partner, launched a demonstration of one-semester learning community programs at six colleges; five of these programs focused on developmental education. This is the final report from the project and includes findings from analyses that pool data across these five…

Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores ("value-added") a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate largely because of disagreement about (1) whether value-added (VA) provides unbiased estimates of teachers' impacts on student achievement and (2) whether high-VA teachers improve students' long-term outcomes.…

Postsecondary credentials are increasingly important to labor market success. Community colleges provide a key pathway to these credentials for many, including low-income and nontraditional students. Unfortunately, many community college students leave before earning a degree or credential, especially those who enter underprepared for…

One way to improve struggling schools' access to effective teachers is to use selective transfer incentives. Such incentives offer bonuses for the highest-performing teachers to move into schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In this report, we provide evidence from a randomized experiment that tested whether such a policy intervention…

The passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which extended need-based financial assistance to the general population for the first time, has improved college access for American students, but more work remains to be done to improve college success. According to government statistics, in 2006, about one in six students had earned a degree or…

Over the last four decades, community colleges have played an increasingly important role in higher education. Today, community colleges enroll more than one in every three undergraduates nationally. Unfortunately, among students who enroll in community colleges with the intent to earn a credential or transfer to a four-year institution, only 51…

Teacher compensation schemes are often criticized for lacking a performance-based component. Proponents of merit pay argue that linking teacher salaries to student achievement will incentivize teachers to focus on raising student achievement and stimulate innovation across the school system as a whole. In this paper, we utilize a policy experiment…

With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CRESST conducted a multi-year evaluation of a major school reform project at Alain Leroy Locke High School, historically one of California's lowest performing secondary schools. Beginning in 2007, Locke High School transitioned into a set of smaller, Green Dot Charter High Schools,…

Forty-four Head Start classrooms were randomly assigned to enriched intervention (Head Start REDI--Research-based, Developmentally Informed) or "usual practice" conditions. The intervention involved brief lessons, "hands-on" extension activities, and specific teaching strategies linked empirically with the promotion of: (a)…

Using a cluster randomization design, schools were randomly assigned to implement Success for All, a comprehensive reading reform model, or control methods. This article reports final literacy outcomes for a 3-year longitudinal sample of children who participated in the treatment or control condition from kindergarten through second grade and a…