Many educational interventions seek to change teachers' instructional practice. Standards-based observation systems are a common and useful tool to understand these interventions' impact, but the process of measuring instructional change with observation systems is highly complex. This paper introduces a framework for examining and understanding…

School-based practitioners are often called upon to provide assessment and recommendations for struggling students. These assessments often open doors to specialised services or interventions and provide opportunities for students to build competencies in areas of need. However, these assessments often fail to highlight the abilities of these…

Most evaluators have embraced the goal of evidence-based practice (EBP). Yet, many have criticized EBP review systems that prioritize randomized control trials and use various criteria to limit the studies examined. They suggest this could produce policy recommendations based on small, unrepresentative segments of the literature and recommend a…

Many evaluations of programs tend to show few outcomes. One solution to this has been an increasing prominence of the movement that requires programs to implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs). But in a complex world with complex organizations and complex interventions, many challenges have arisen to the implementation of EBIs with fidelity…

Purpose: In January 2015, the Northwest Board of Cooperative Educational Services (NW BOCES) received a five-year Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to develop and implement the System for Educator Effectiveness Development (SEED) program--an innovative professional development (PD) system designed to provide geographically isolated educators an…

Background: Our ability to look at structure and function of a living brain has increased exponentially since the early 1970s. Many studies of developmental disorders now routinely include a brain imaging or electrophysiological component. Amid current enthusiasm for applications of neuroscience to educational interventions, we need to pause to…

Purpose: To evaluate the current state of research evidence related to cognitive interventions for individuals with Alzheimer's disease or related dementias. Method: A systematic search of the literature was conducted across 27 electronic databases based on a set of a priori questions, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and search parameters. Studies…

In response to concern over the numeracy skills deficit displayed by student nurses, an online computer programme, "Authentic World[R]", which aims to simulate a real-life clinical environment and improve the medication dosage calculation skills of users, was developed (Founded in 2004 Authentic World Ltd is a spin out company of…

This article illustrates the application of the Impact Evaluation Process for the design of a performance measurement and evaluation framework for an urban high school. One of the key aims of this framework is to enhance decision-making by providing timely feedback about the effectiveness of various performance improvement interventions. The…

This commentary for a special issue of "Remedial and Special Education" (RASE) on the perspectives of senior scholars (a) opens with some comments regarding the role of measures we use in behavioral science to pursue scientific truth and then (b) discusses the three most impactful developments in emotional and behavioral disorders over…

The study reviewed here examined whether taking a course with a tenure track professor versus a non-tenure track professor for first-term freshman-level courses (e.g., introductory economics) had an impact on students' future enrollment and performance in classes in the same subject. Data from 15,662 students who entered Northwestern University,…

Objective: Child mental health treatment and services research yields more immediate public health benefit when they focus on outcomes of relevance to a broader group of stakeholders. We reviewed all experimental studies of child and adolescent treatment and service effectiveness published in the last 15 years (1996-2011) and compared the…

The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effectiveness of psychoeducational interventions in reducing stress and to gain more insight in determining features moderating the magnitude of effects. Relevant studies were selected from 1990 to 2010 and were included according to predetermined criteria. For each study, the standardized mean…

The study, "The Impact of Indiana's System of Interim Assessments on Mathematics and Reading," examined the effects of using Diagnostic Assessment Tools (DAT) on mathematics and reading outcomes for students in 59 Indiana schools during the 2009-10 academic year. DAT consists of interim assessment tools--Wireless Generation's mCLASS for…

In the recent years there has been a ten-fold increase in the incidence of autism in the USA. It is also estimated that approximately 67 million people are affected by autism worldwide. This worldwide epidemic has led to an increased interest in the identification and use of evidence-based interventions for individuals with autism. Interventions…