Research Findings: Several barriers can impede the use and effectiveness of intensive professional development programs, such as courses and coaching, for educators across today's mixed delivery early education system. The present study introduces and tests a light-touch text message-based approach to encourage educators' use of two high-quality…

The goals of most secondary school mentoring programs are to advance the skills and competencies of beginning teachers while simultaneously reducing attrition and improving student learning. In Massachusetts, there is a lack of widespread efficacy in existing public high school mentoring programs. The purpose of this study was to examine how to…

Between 1990 and 2010, the demographics of Everett, Massachusetts underwent significant change. Families that were new to the community, and new to the United States, arrived to the predominantly white working-class community, bringing ethnic and linguistic diversity. Everett Public Schools faced a challenge in accommodating a more diverse student…

In 2004, Boston Public Schools reported that more than 8% of its students dropped out of school that year. The city faced a crisis. Thousands of students were failing to earn a high-school diploma, a necessary credential for entrance into postsecondary education and/or the twenty-first century workforce. Factors driving students' decisions to…

Foreign language telecollaboration pairs learners so that they may improve their language and intercultural skills. A lesser known model, intergenerational telecollaboration, uses senior citizens as native language partners instead of peers. This paper presents the results of an intergenerational videoconferencing project between learners in…

The large number of limited English proficient (LEP) children in U.S. schools and the uncertainty about the impact of bilingual education versus English immersion on their achievement warrant rigorous investigation of the effects of "English immersion laws." We estimated the impact of "Question 2", the Massachusetts English…

In the field of medicine, research and practice are joined in teaching hospitals. In these institutions, researchers work alongside doctors to incorporate recent advances in medical research into practice and track results. There is a growing movement in the field of education to create analogous institutions in education called research schools.…

This article tells a story of practice, a story of theory, and how each informs and transforms the other through a two-way flow of people and knowledge from a city to a campus and back again. By reflecting with fellow participants on the events and outcomes of a sustained city campus partnership, the author introduces a theory of engagement from…

Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) and the National Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) have teamed up to bring you a ground-breaking policy brief that examines the role of school districts in promoting family engagement. "Seeing is Believing: Promising Practices for How School Districts Promote Family Engagement" spotlights how six…

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of…

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of…

For the past dozen years the author has been teaching, along with other volunteers, in a program called "Changing Lives Through Literature," serving the Dorchester District Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Changing Lives began as a single experiment in New Bedford in 1991 and has spread entirely by word of mouth to a dozen…

This paper examines the educational impacts of the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (BWLI), a pilot program that provided 1:1 technology access to all students and teachers across five public and private middle schools in western Massachusetts. Using a pre/post comparative study design, the current study explores a wide range of program…

The Global 2000 project was a 3-year project aimed at improving literacy in five Massachusetts manufacturing companies. To help determine the project's effectiveness, a team of external evaluators analyzed the relationship between the knowledge students gained in the classroom, their actual performance on the job, and the resulting business impact…

The Global 2000 project was a 3-year project aimed at improving literacy in five Massachusetts manufacturing companies. At four of the five Global 2000 program sites, an external evaluator conducted focus groups and open-ended interviews with members of the projects' employee involvement teams, previous students, and teachers. The evaluator also…