This report presents summative findings from RAND's six-year evaluation of the BHP Foundation's Education Equity program. The evaluation is based on a review of funded partner organizations' internal program progress reports, performance indicators, and independent project evaluation reports; interviews with representatives from partner…

Purpose: This research seeks to identify evidence of innovation elements in the implementation of a sustainable development ecosystem in the HE environment. For the purposes of this investigation, the use of developmental evaluation has been deemed appropriate to fully explore the depths of the topic. Design/methodology/approach: The research…

While the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools program has produced the intended results, such as enhancing how teachers use technology in the classroom to increase student engagement, we have also discovered some unexpected outcomes--teachers and coaches in participating schools have experienced improved job satisfaction and increased…

Increasing instructional quality in higher education is a key goal of educational development (ED) work, yet demonstrating complex outcomes remains challenging and lacks practical guidance. Evaluating ED services often relies on a reductionist approach characterized by linear assumptions of causal pathways to measure the extent to which…

The authors offer a set of recommendations for the next Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization. They recommend changes to the assessment, accountability and Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA) as well as for a federally-supported research and evaluation…

This evaluation report presents the findings from the project-level evaluation of the CareerTech Challenge, delivered between May 2020 and June 2021. The report examines how the design and delivery of evaluations were undertaken, the findings across process and outcome evaluations and key learning from capacity building support delivered by…

Schools across the nation are implementing innovative practices; however, questions remain regarding how to facilitate quality implementation. Research designs that emphasize high degrees of control over independent variables result in findings with internal validity, but that may not generalize to complex, dynamic educational systems. The purpose…

This paper focuses on Denmark's Master of Public Governance and its assessments and lessons learned. Denmark is seen to have an efficient economy and public sector, a digitalized public service delivery system, and an advanced work-life balance. The Danish government invested substantial resources into developing a Master of Public Governance…

Many geoscience education initiatives now involve cross-departmental or multi-institutional programs. However, the geoscientists who lead such programs typically have little experience or training in program design, leadership, or evaluation. In this commentary, we make the case that geoscientists taking on these ambitious leadership roles can…

In an era when novel educational technologies are constantly introduced to the marketplace, often accompanied by hyperbolic claims that these ground-breaking innovations will transform the educational landscape, decision makers in educational institutions need a methodological approach for examining the innovative potential of new educational…

"Partners Advancing Childhood Education" ("PACE") is an Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. "PACE" is a family engagement program that enhances family engagement skills among educators and leadership skills among parents to…

At a time of increasing calls from policy makers for the use of "hard evidence" in driving decision-making at national and local levels in educational contexts, this article contributes to debates about evidence-based practice in early literacy research. It proposes that a reliance on studies designed to generate 'hard' evidence limits…

This report is an evaluation of the Investing in Innovation (i3) program, a tiered-evidence grantmaking initiative at the U.S. Department of Education. The program's primary purpose is to support the development, testing, and scaling of field-initiated programs for high-need students in K-12 education. This report reviews the program's early…

Over the last 25 years, the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) has invested nearly $5.3 billion into the charter school sector, directing funds to schools in 43 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Approximately 60% of students in CSP grantee schools are from low-income backgrounds and 64% are Black or Hispanic. The CSP has played a critical role in…

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…