Child Trends contracted with the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to conduct an independent evaluation of Parent Aware, Minnesota's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. The evaluation includes several legislatively mandated research activities designed to assess the…

What is credible and actionable evidence can vary by program discipline in the Cooperative Extension Service. Through a series of interviews with program leadership from Agriculture, Natural Resources, Youth Development, Family Development, and Community Vitality, a case study of one state's Extension system is described. While programs certainly…

The Midwest Expansion of the Child-Parent Center Education Program (MCPC) is a pre-K to 3rd grade intervention program aimed at improving economically disadvantaged children's school success by enhancing continuity in instruction and increasing parental involvement. Opened in Chicago in the 1960s, this school reform model has undergone significant…

On February 18-19, 2016, representatives of 10 states participating in the Credit When It's Due (CWID) initiative attended a convening held at the University of Utah. The meeting was led by the CWID Research Team and sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, on behalf of the CWID Funders Collaborative. The…

Districts across the country are facing severe shortages of teachers--especially in certain subjects (math, science, special education, career and technical education, and bilingual education) and in specific schools (urban, rural, high-poverty, high-minority, and low-achieving). The severity of the teacher shortage problem varies significantly by…

The literature on teacher preparation programs in the United States is extensive. However, there is limited scientifically based research on what kind of program produces effective teachers; rather, the literature consists mostly of calls for change in teacher preparation programs. Almost all experts agree that major changes are needed in these…

WAC scholars have demonstrated a strong commitment to faculty professional development in WAC programs but have yet to engage in much conversation, at least in scholarly literature, about the training of TAs in the teaching of writing. The rising number of TAs in doctoral-granting institutions and WAC programs suggests their role in teaching…

"Read Naturally" is a supplemental reading program designed to improve reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension of elementary and middle school students using a combination of books, audio CDs, and computer software. The program combines three main strategies: modeling of story reading, repeated reading of text for developing oral…

The "Read Naturally"[R] program is a supplemental reading program that aims to improve reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension of elementary and middle school students using a combination of texts, audio CDs, and computer software. The program uses one of four products that share a common fluency-building strategy: "Read…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

A team at the University of Minnesota conducted the Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) core evaluation between 1999 and 2004. The purpose of the CETP core evaluation was to achieve consensus among CETP project leaders and project evaluators on evaluation questions; to develop, pilot, and field test evaluation instruments…

This paper presents a list of resources on what states are doing on the topic of Black male dropouts. These resources are taken from the report abstracts or summaries. This paper is a response to a request asking for these resources. (Contains 5 footnotes.)

The study examined how the English reading performance of predominantly Spanish-speaking students in transitional bilingual education compared with the performance of predominantly Spanish-speaking students in structured English immersion. The study analyzed data on three cohorts of students in six schools in Los Angeles; Denver; Albuquerque; St.…

Today, English language learners (ELLs)--students whose primary language is other than English--are the fastest-growing major school population in the United States. Between 2000-01 and 2010-11, the number of these students, whose level of English proficiency is not sufficient to support learning in a regular English language classroom, rose 18…

Over the past two decades, community organizing has emerged as an effective force for school improvement. In the context of shrinking education funding, stubborn opportunity and achievement gaps between low-income and wealthy children and between children of color and White children, and polarizing debate on school reform, community organizing…