Background/Prior Research: Research shows that teacher quality is the single most powerful influence on student learning (e.g., Nye et al., 2004; Rivkin et al., 2005), yet teachers report that they are not well prepared to implement standards- based mathematics education with heterogeneous groups of students. Banilower et al. (2018) found in a…

Background: In the immediate aftermath of school closures related to COVID-19, efforts to unpack the impact of the pandemic on student outcomes surged. As schools have returned to fully in-person learning, that focus has shifted towards the implementation and evaluation of interventions to remediate or accelerate impacted learning. However,…

Billions of dollars are spent every year on teacher professional development (PD) programs (Fermanich, 2002; Odden et al., 2002; TNTP, 2015; U.S. Department of Education, 2014). The few rigorous evaluations of PD programs that have been done usually report a null effect on student achievement, leading many scholars to conclude that teacher PD…

Educational leaders through the United States have prioritized developing integrated tiered systems to assist educators in meeting students' academic, behavioral, and social and emotional well-being learning needs in an integrated fashion (McIntosh & Goodman, 2016). This is an important shift away from traditional reactive models towards…

Background: Students of color are disproportionately placed in special education throughout the United States. Prior research suggests that special education is used too often in high-poverty schools partly due to limited resources available to support struggling students (Skiba et al., 2006). More recent studies, however, suggest that…

This study provides a basis for understanding how long it typically takes English language learners (ELLs) in seven Washington school districts to achieve reclassification as former ELLs. Researchers looked at ELLs' grade level and English proficiency at school entry, as well as their gender, home language, race/ethnicity, special education…

Professional development for teachers has historically been fairly didactic in nature (Garet et al., 2001; Rose & Church, 1998), which is believed to limit effectiveness and translation to teacher practice change (Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005). One well-established program with a more active, collaborative training…

The UChicago Consortium on School Research has been surveying students, teachers, and principals in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) since 1991 using what is now known as the 5Essentials surveys. The developers categorized and grouped survey measures into what they refer to as "The Five Essentials for School Improvement." The value of…

"Time to Act," a 2009 report of the Carnegie Corporation's Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, concludes that U.S. students are ill-prepared for the literacy challenges of 21st century higher education, employment, and citizenship. Word Generation (WG) is a research-based vocabulary program for middle school students designed to…

Teacher evaluation is currently a major policy issue at all levels of the K-12 system driven in large part by current US Department of Education requirements. The main objective of this study is to explore the patterns of relationship between observational scores and value-added measures of teacher performance in math classrooms and the variation…