Improvement

Schools in the United States now spend more than $2 billion each year on education technology. But what are schools getting in return for this significant investment in technology learning? Robert Slavin examines the results from five studies designed to answer this question.

This review of the research on secondary reading programs focuses on 69 studies that used random assignment (n=62) or high-quality quasi-experiments (n=7) to evaluate outcomes of 51 programs on widely accepted measures of reading.The study found programs using one-to-one and small-group tutoring (+0.14 to +0.28 effect size), cooperative learning (+0.10 effect size), whole-school approaches including organizational reforms such as teacher teams (+0.06 effect size), and writing-focused approaches (+0.13 effect size) showed positive outcomes. Individual approaches in a few other categories also showed positive impacts. The findings are important suggesting interventions for secondary readers to improve struggling student’s chances of experiencing greater success in high school and better opportunities after graduation.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a classroom-teacher-delivered reading intervention for struggling readers called the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), designed particularly for kindergarten and first-grade teachers and their struggling students in rural, low-wealth communities. 

Providing children with nutritious school meals continues to be a topic of interest in education policy. It has been argued that a healthy diet can have a positive impact on childhood obesity as well as student achievement. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this popular intervention. A working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research offers insights to help policy makers decide whether to select this option as a way to make a difference in children’s lives. The study, a natural experiment conducted in California public schools, uses a difference-in-difference regression statistical analysis of data from a treatment group and a control group at two or more different time periods, pre-treatment and post-treatment. The study found no evidence to support a reduction in obesity, but it did discover that introducing healthy meals was associated with a 0.036 standard deviation increase in test scores. The improved student achievement, although small, makes nutritious school lunches a viable cost-effective intervention that can boost test scores. It is important to remember that this is a correlational study and thus cannot establish a cause and effect relationship between healthy eating and student achievement.

This article discuss about study that measures the effect of offering healthier public school lunches on end of year academic test scores for public school students in California. This study focus on school-specific differences in lunch quality over-time. The study shows increasing the nutritional quality of school meals appears to be promising, cost-effective way to improve student learning. 

Professional judgment is required whenever conditions are uncertain.  This article provides an analysis of professional judgment and describes sources of error in decision making.

Self-conscious federal efforts to promote innovation in local educational practices have resulted in little consistent or identifiable improvement in student outcomes. Although such student outcomes may be disappointing, they do not accurately reflect the potential of innovative ideas because many innovations are not implemented according to plan. This interpretation of the problem stresses the complexity of the implementation process and locates the essence of the problem not in inadequacies of innovative plans but in the bureaucratic nature of the educational system itself.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of peer feedback on the quality of student writing and the amount and kind of revision behavior. Peer feedback seemed to help students write initially superior rough drafts but was not consistently linked to improvement of content between rough and final drafts. Successful surface structure editing occurred with or without peer feedback.

The author reviews the economics literature at the intersection between innovation and K-12 education from two different, but related perspectives.

This article briefly describes blending learning definition and models.

The Clayton Christensen Institute, formerly Innosight Institute, has published three papers describing the rise of K−12 blended learning. This fourth paper is the first to analyze blended learning through the lens of disruptive innovation theory to help people anticipate and plan for the likely effects of blended learning on the classrooms of today and schools of tomorrow. 

A rationale and model for changing assessment efforts in schools from simple description to the integration of information from multiple sources for the purpose of designing interventions are described.

The history and the intra-and inter-literature consensus of these two lines of inquiry will be examined in this review. The purpose is to determine whether the findings and generalizations of those bodies of research can be used conjointly in order to understand how schools strive to change to attain more effective instructional outcomes. 

This practice guide provides five recommendations for improving students’ mathematical problem solving in grades 4 through 8. The manual is geared toward teachers, math coaches, other educators, and curriculum developers who want to improve the mathematical problem solving of students.

This paper discusses an adapted-Continuous Practice Improvement model, which qualitative findings indicate was effective in facilitating the transfer of creative and innovative teaching approaches from the expert or Resident Teacher’s school to the novice or Visiting Teachers’ classrooms over the duration of the project. 

The authors arguing that the United States needs to move much more decisively than it has in the last quarter-century to establish a purposeful, equitable education system that will prepare all our children for success in a knowledge-based society.

a mini-series from School Psychology Review about Academic Enablers to Improve Student Performance: Considerations for Research and Practice. 

The book discusses the analytical and policy challenges that face health systems in seeking to allocate resources efficiently and fairly. New chapters include 'Principles of economic evaluation' and 'Making decisions in healthcare'.

In 2000, the National Reading Panel identified five practice elements with a sufficient evidence base to be deemed essential for mastery of reading (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). These elements consist of systematic teaching of phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, vocabulary, fluency, and exposure to reading comprehension strategies. This meta-analysis of 25 studies evaluates the impact of inference instruction in grades K-12. The study reported that inference instruction had an effect size d=0.58 on general comprehension and d= 0.68 on literal comprehension. These are “moderate to large” effects of instruction on general comprehension and to making inferences for both skilled and less skilled readers. The pattern differed for the literal measure, however, with skilled readers showing almost no gain but unskilled readers showing sizable gains. 

This study examines the issue of extending the school day and year. The positive effects of having more time for teaching through longer class periods, individual assistance, and tutoring sessions, students spend more time on task than do students in schools operating on a conventional schedule. Studying these schools also reveals that despite the benefits there are hefty challenges to extending the school day.

In this book, Gambrill examines the importance of critical thinking, the biases that all of us are prone to, and ways to improve our judgments.

This workbook provides exercises for improving the decision-making of helping professionals.

This report: (1) investigates the declining state of the educational system in America, as measured by high school student performance in the United States and other countries; (2) identifies specific problem areas; and (3) offers multiple recommendations for improvement

Educator performance evaluation systems are a potential tool for improving student achievement by increasing the effectiveness of the educator workforce. For example, recent research suggests that giving more frequent, specific feedback on classroom practice may lead to improvements in teacher performance and student achievement.

The Rand Corporation just released its report evaluating the impact of the Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI),a project supported by the Wallace Foundation to create and implement a strategic process for school leadership talent management. This report documents what the PPI districts were able to accomplish, describing the implementation of the PPI and its effects on student achievement, other school outcomes, and principal retention. 

This paper discusses the effectiveness of research‐based educational approaches on
classroom practice.

Conventional wisdom holds that heuristics and biases lead to flawded decision making.  This paper makes the case that under some conditions they actually make decision-making more efficient.

This meta-analysis examines 23 studies for student access to curriculum by assessing the gap in reading achievement between general education peers and students with disabilities (SWD). The study finds that SWDs performed more than three years below peers. The study looks at the implications for changing this pictures and why current policies and practices are not achieving the desired results.

This study examines adoption and implementation of the US Department of Education's new policy, the `Principles of Effectiveness', from a diffusion of innovations theoretical framework. In this report, we evaluate adoption in relation to Principle 3: the requirement to select research-based programs.

This chapter describes findings from a series of related quantitative studies in which we sought to understand how leadership contributes to school capacity for improvement and student learning.

This paper reports on the analysis of state statutes and department of education regulations in fifty states for changes in teacher evaluation in use since the passage of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

We examined 24 studies to determine the effects on word recognition and reading comprehension of correcting errors during oral reading. Corrective feedback improved students' word reading accuracy on words in lists, and accuracy in reading words in passages. Some correction procedures had greater benefits than others.

Community colleges typically offer extensive developmental education programs to students
with weak academic skills in order to prepare them for college-level coursework. Yet, for
students referred to developmental mathematics education, rates of completion in
developmental math courses and in college-level math courses required for a degree are
particularly low.

this hands-on guide expands upon the blended learning ideas presented in
that book to provide practical implementation guidance for educators seeking to incorporate
online learning with traditional classroom time

Using longitudinal elementary school teacher and student data, we document that students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we show that a teacher's students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when she has more effective colleagues.

The authors examined the effectiveness of self-monitoring for increasing the rates of teacher praise statements and the acceptability of using this technique for teachers. The participant was a first-year teacher of high school students with emotional and behavioral disturbances. In all, this study's results support the use of self-monitoring to increase effective teaching practices, namely praise, and further demonstrates high social validity for the participant and the students.

In recent years, educators and policymakers have agreed that principals are critical to school success and have repeatedly pointed out the need to aggressively recruit and select highly qualified candidates. Surprisingly, however, the evaluation of principals has attracted much less interest. Recent policy documents on school leadership have largely ignored the topic, and the empirical research base is very thin.

A study of 27 promising programs reveals 8 common reasons that educational innovations fail, including disenchanted practitioners; departure of innovation supporters; lack of personnel training; disappearing funding; inadequate supervision; and lack of accountability, administrative support, and termination consequences. Innovations succeed by avoiding overload, complementing school mission, and securing board approval

This meta-analysis of behavior management strategies includes single-subject designed studies of 838 students from 22 studies for K-12 classrooms. The study finds the behavior management strategies are highly effective for improving student conduct. Interventions that used an individual or group contingency demonstrated large effects and were the most common behavior management strategies used. The study finds few studies included diverse populations other than African-American students.They also find a need to improve upon the quality of available studies on the classroom management strategies.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identified five studies of NBPTS certification that both fall within the scope of the Teacher Training, Evaluation, and Compensation topic area and meet WWC group design standards.

This book is designed to help the reader fully comprehend teacher leadership as a pathway to school improvement.

The National Center for Education Evaluation, a division of the Institute of Education Sciences has released a new research brief that evaluated two strategies for improving educator effectiveness as measured by improvements in student outcomes.  

Over the past twenty years many reading interventions have been proposed. One of these, “Book Flooding”, proposes that providing an enriched environment in which books are present and readily available can improve reading. Much of the research on this topic has focused on exposing children in the early grades to storybooks. Given the greater importance on reading complex text in meeting new reading standards, this study examines the impact of book flooding of books that stress academic words and technical terms. This quasi-experimental study examines the influence of a book distribution program targeted at enhancing children’s exposure to information books. The research examined whether a flood of information books in early childhood settings could affect growth in language, content-related vocabulary, and concepts of comprehending information text. The study concludes there were no significant effects on student outcomes and that book distribution programs on their own need to be reevaluated if they are to improved student reading performance.

US President Obama has launched one of the world’s most ambitious education reform agendas. Under the heading “Race to the Top”, this agenda encourages US states to adopt internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace: recruit, develop, reward, and retain effective teachers and principals. 

This research synthesis examines randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental research on the mathematics achievement outcomes for elementary school programs. The best outcomes were found for tutoring programs. The findings suggest that programs emphasizing personalization, engagement, and motivation are most impactful in elementary mathematics instruction.

Effects of a 1-semester professional development (PD) intervention that included expert coaching with Head Start teachers were investigated in a randomized controlled trial with 88 teachers and 759 children. 

The authors use research-based "impact modeling" to show how a strategic approach to recruiting and supporting rookie teachers could yield as much as 4.2 extra months of student learning. We provide 5 recommendations for school systems to leverage their investment in structures that provide rookie teachers with both shelter and development.

Often principals in urban school districts report to a central office staff person whose primary function is to supervise principals. Over the past decade, the principal supervisor role has shifted away from administrative oversight toward developing principals’ instructional leadership capacity. As principals are increasingly responsible for driving improvement in their schools, the demands of supervising principals similarly have changed.

Decades of research and billions of dollars have been spent to develop and evaluate evidence-based interventions and develop multitiered systems of support (MTSS) toward the goal of more effectively delivering interventions and improving student outcomes. Available evidence, however, suggests interventions are often adopted slowly and delivered with poor fidelity, resulting in uninspiring outcomes for students. 

Given the importance of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for improving outcomes for students with disabilities, it is key that preservice special education teachers have the opportunity to implement EBPs with high levels of fidelity during their teacher preparation program. For this reason, the authors conducted a systematic review of the literature to answer the question: Does providing performance feedback improve preservice special education teachers’ fidelity of implementation of EBPs and outcomes for students with disabilities?

This report breaks out key steps in the school identification and improvement process, focusing on (1) a diagnosis of school needs; (2) a plan to improve schools; and (3) evidenced-based interventions that work.

This article reviews the corpus of research on feedback, with a focus on formative feedback—defined as information communicated to the learner that is intended to modify his or her thinking or behavior to improve learning. According to researchers, formative feedback should be nonevaluative, supportive, timely, and specific.

A recent large-scale evaluation of Reading Recovery, a supplemental reading program for young struggling readers, supports previous research that found it to be effective.  In a 4 year, federally funded project, almost 3,500 students in 685 schools found that generally students benefitted from the intervention. Students receiving Reading Recovery receive supplemental services in a 1:1 instructional setting for 30 minutes 5 days a week from an instructor trained in Reading Recovery.  In the study reported here, students who received Reading Recovery had effect sizes of .35-.37 relative to a control group across a number of measures of reading.  These represent moderate effect sizes and account for about a 1.5 month increase in skill relative to the control group.  Even though the research supports the efficacy of the intervention, it also raises questions about its efficiency.  The schools that participated in the study served about 5 students and the estimated cost per student has ranged from $2,000-$5,000.  These data raise questions about the wisdom of spending this much money per student for growth of about a month and a half.

This report, completed by the Center on Education Policy, attempts to provide an initial snapshot of the number and percentages of schools each states has identified low performing. It provides an early look at a very diverse set of guidelines.  The data show a wide range of results in terms of the percentage of schools identified as low performing. The overall range is 3% to 99%, with individual states spread out fairly evenly in between. Eight states identified over 40% of their public schools as low performing, eleven states 20%–40%, fifteen states 11%–19%, and thirteen states 3%–10%. Even with the limitations of the data listed above, this data suggests inconsistent standards across states.

This paper examines a range of education failures: common mistakes in how new practices are selected, implemented, and monitored. The goal is not a comprehensive listing of all education failures but rather to provide education stakeholders with an understanding of the importance of vigilance when implementing new practices.

Summative assessment is an appraisal of learning at the end of an instructional unit or at a specific point in time. It compares student knowledge or skills against standards or benchmarks. Summative assessment includes midterm exams, final project, papers, teacher-designed tests, standardized tests, and high-stakes tests. 

This meta-analysis examines the impact of 1^st tier reading instruction on reading outcomes for students in grades 4-12 in an Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS) service delivery model. 37 studies met criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The study finds small, but positive effects for 1^st tier reading instruction on comprehension, vocabulary, and indicates minimum evidence for struggling readers maintaining or improving reading comprehension over struggling students receiving typical instruction. Hedges’s g was used calculating effect sizes. Because of the limited number of studies examining phonics/word recognition and fluency instruction, it was not possible these critical instruction areas in this meta-analysis.

In the research reported here, the authors study one approach to teacher evaluation: practice-based assessment that relies on multiple, highly structured classroom observations conducted by experienced peer teachers and administrators. 

"The Mirage" describes the widely held perception among education leaders that they already know how to help teachers improve, and that they could achieve their goal of great teaching in far more classrooms if they just applied what they knew more widely.

This paper examines the types of research to consider when evaluating programs, how to know what “evidence’ to use, and continuums of evidence (quantity of the evidence, quality of the evidence, and program development).

On September 23, 2011, the U.S. Department of Education offered each interested State educational agency  the opportunity to request flexibility on behalf of itself, its local educational agencies, and its schools, in order to better focus on improving student learning and increasing the quality of instruction. This voluntary opportunity will provide educators and State and local leaders with flexibility regarding specific requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, in exchange for rigorous and comprehensive State-developed plans designed to improve educational outcomes for all students, close achievement gaps, increase equity, and improve the quality of instruction.

Attracting and retaining teachers can be an important ingredient in improving low-performing schools. In this study, we estimate the expressed preferences for teachers who have worked in low-performing schools in Tennessee. Using adaptive conjoint analysis survey design, we examine three types of school attributes that may influence teachers’ employment decisions: fixed school characteristics, structural features of employment, and malleable school processes.

As suggested by the title, the purpose of this Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement is to provide principles for restructuring and substantially improving schools. Sponsored by the US Department of Education, the Center on Innovation & Improvement (CII) engaged leading experts on restructuring and school improvement to prepare modules for this handbook to assist states, districts, and schools in establishing policies.

The use of educational data to make decisions and foster improvement is increasing dramatically. Federal and state accountability mandates have created a strong market for formal achievement testing, both in terms of state achievement tests and benchmarking assessments that help predict performance on these tests.

This report synthesizes what research says works in improving teacher skills and knowledge, what nations that outperform the United States in education are doing, and provides an analysis of newly available data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey and other sources to indicate where the nation stands in building the capacity of educators to help students reach high standards. It includes newly analyzed data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey and other data sources.

This Considerations Packet is designed to support school leadership teams as they guide school improvement efforts. Topics include the rationale for using a team approach, team composition, and necessary skills and responsibilities of the leadership team.

Daniel Willingham and Gail Lovette's interpretation of the effect of comprehension instruction is that it signals to students the significance of inferential thinking. Willingham and Lovette conclude that practicing inferences does not lead to increases in general inferencing for the following reasons; inferencing depends on the particular text, and whatever cognitive processes contribute to inferencing are already well practiced in oral language as we are constantly drawing inferences in daily conversation.

This article compares the relative cost-effectiveness of the five policies, using best-evidence estimates drawn from available data regarding the effectiveness and costs of rapid assessment, increased spending, voucher programs, charter schools, and accountability, using a conservative methodology for calculating the relative effectiveness of the rapid assessment.

More than two-thirds of students living in U.S. low-income urban areas have not demonstrated basic levels of math achievement. Teachers are confronted with a difficult task of meeting the needs of an increasingly academically diverse population of urban students. There is a well-confirmed knowledge base on effective instruction, but teachers need massive amounts of information for effective, sustainable improvement and data-driven decision making.