In recent years, several states have expanded a new publicly funded learning option: Transitional Kindergarten (TK). TK bridges prekindergarten and kindergarten in its eligibility, requirements, and design. Using Michigan as a case study, we examine TK's fit in the early learning landscape. Broadly, we find TK in Michigan reduces some…

Creating equitable classrooms is difficult for many preservice teachers. Addressing this challenge includes helping them understand what equity is and recognizing how teaching practices contribute to (in)equitable learning environments. This investigation describes how one teacher education program approaches helping students by employing an…

"Grow Your Own" (GYO) programs have emerged as a new approach to expanding teacher supply, addressing localized shortages, and diversifying the profession. However, little is known about the scale and design of GYO programs, which recruit and support individuals from the local community to become teachers. We conduct a quantitative…

Many novice teachers learn to teach "on the job," leading to burnout and attrition among teachers and negative outcomes for students in the long term. Preservice teacher education is tasked with optimizing teacher readiness, but there is a lack of causal evidence regarding effective ways to prepare new teachers. In this paper, we use a…

To address the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress authorized the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF I) in March 2020 with over $6 billion allocated for emergency financial aid. In this paper, we utilize the administrative burden framework to analyze HEERF I implementation for a stratified random sample of…

Instructional leadership has become the dominant paradigm in principal preparation and professional learning. In parallel, teacher evaluation has risen in prominence. Using interviews from 84 principals in 23 districts and three states, we asked how teacher evaluation influenced principals' reported priorities and conceptions of instructional…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted teacher candidates' ability to complete licensure requirements, prompting many states to temporarily reduce professional entry requirements to avoid teacher shortages. This study examines the emergency teaching license in Massachusetts, which allowed individuals with only a bachelor's degree to enter the teacher…

The out-of-school time (OST) field in the United States has a complex history. The push to offer programming reflects a legacy rooted in moral panics about racially minoritized youth. However, this field is populated by community spaces that act as multipurpose sites of culturally sustaining educational practices supporting positive youth…

We Learn Together is a 20-week, low-cost infant/toddler school-readiness intervention developed to provide instructional content and supportive tools for teachers to be more explicit and intentional in interactions with children to support early development. Short-term effects were established in a previously published real-world effectiveness…

This article documents the expansion of corporate-sponsored tuition benefit (CSTB) programs from the managerial class to America's low-wage workers and considers how the goals and design of CSTB programs square with those of college access programs. Because CSTBs simultaneously have the goals of college access, employee retention, and return on…

This study investigates the impact of the Imagine Math program, a digital supplemental learning solution, on math achievement. The research compares the performance of students who used the program with those who did not. Results indicate that users experienced, on average, a statistically significant improvement in their math performance.…

Billions of dollars are invested in opt-in educational resources to support struggling students. Yet there is no guarantee these students will use these resources. We report results from a school system's implementation of on-demand tutoring. The take-up was low. At baseline, only 19% of students ever accessed the platform, and low-performing…

This article used a rich longitudinal data set from four school districts in California to study absenteeism patterns among students classified as an English learner (EL). We looked at absence patterns overall and disaggregated by EL classification, grade level, and pre/post COVID-19. When their demographic and school-level factors are considered,…

This study adds to the limited literature base on extracurricular debate by using doubly robust inverse probability treatment weighting to estimate the average treatment effect for the treated of preadolescent debate participation on a variety of academic and engagement outcomes among a 10-year longitudinal sample of Baltimore City Public School…

Education decision makers routinely make choices among programs and strategies to implement. Policy demands increasingly require that such decisions are based on evidence regarding program effectiveness at improving student outcomes. However, research evidence is but one of the considerations that practitioners must juggle, along with local…