Plausible competing developmental models show similar or identical structural equation modeling model fit indices, despite making very different causal predictions. One way to help address this problem is incorporating outside information into selecting among models. This study attempted to select among developmental models of children's early…

Principals are the second-largest school-based contributor to K-12 students' academic progress. However, there is little research evaluating whether efforts to develop principals' skills improve school effectiveness. We conducted randomized controlled trial studies of the impacts of a professional development program called the Executive…

Community colleges are essential for United States higher education, but their students have low retention and graduation rates. Community college students assigned to mathematics remediation are particularly unlikely to graduate. Corequisite remediation (college-level coursework with additional support) has shown short-term increased student…

Analyses were conducted with second graders, drawn from an ongoing multi-cohort randomized controlled trial (RCT), who had been identified for RCT entry based on comorbid reading comprehension and word-problem solving difficulty. To estimate pandemic learning loss, we contrasted fall performance for 3 cohorts: fall of 2019 (pre-pandemic; n = 47),…

Empirical evidence exists that enhancing students' language can promote the mathematics learning of multilingual students at risk, whereas other target groups (e.g., monolingual students, successful students, both with diverse academic language proficiency) have hardly been considered. This cluster-randomized controlled trial (N = 589)…

The provision of high-quality early mathematics instruction and intervention is critical to ensure that all students are on track for academic success. Given this, identifying and utilizing assessments that can enable the detection of nonresponse to mathematics instruction is a critical aspect of early intervention. To this end, the current study…

Teacher professional development and in-class mentors were used to support structured inquiry with math manipulatives. Twenty-four primary schools (n = 6,628 students) were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups as an experimental field trial to examine the effectiveness of this instructional approach in a scaled-up application in…

Dual-credit courses expose high school students to college-level content and provide the opportunity to earn college credits, in part to smooth the transition to college. With the Tennessee Department of Education, we conduct the first randomized controlled trial of the effects of dual-credit math coursework on a range of high school and college…

This meta-analysis is the first to provide a quantitative synthesis of empirical evaluations of mathematical intervention programs implemented in secondary schools for students with learning disabilities and mathematics difficulties. Included studies used a treatment-control group design. A total of 19 experimental and quasi-experimental studies…

Community colleges are a large sector of postsecondary education. In 2016-2017, the United States had nearly 1,000 public 2-year postsecondary institutions (community colleges), serving almost nine million students, representing 39% of all undergraduates. The majority of entering community college students require developmental (or remedial) math.…

Many college students never take, or do not pass, required remedial mathematics courses theorized to increase college-level performance. Some colleges and states are therefore instituting policies allowing students to take college-level courses without first taking remedial courses. However, no experiments have compared the effectiveness of these…

More than 20 percent of all school-aged children in the United States have vision problems, and low-income and minority children are disproportionately likely to have unmet vision care needs. Vision screening is common in U.S. schools, but it remains an open question whether screening alone is sufficient to improve student outcomes. We implemented…

Many school systems are adopting new curricula in response to more rigorous standards that require higher-order thinking skills. This chapter presents implementation findings from a randomized, controlled trial of the Cognitive Tutor Geometry curriculum. We found a significant negative effect on student achievement despite the curriculum's focus…

Across the United States, more than half of entering freshmen discover they are ineligible for college-level coursework each year, most commonly in math. The readiness gap is widest when considering students at nonselective two-year colleges, and students who are black, Hispanic, or from low-income families. It often spells disaster for students…

With a randomized field experiment of 433 preschoolers, we tested a tablet mathematics program designed to increase young children's mathematics learning. Intervention students played Math Shelf, a comprehensive iPad preschool and year 1 mathematics app, while comparison children received research-based hands-on mathematics instruction delivered…