In public schools across the country, student needs are both diversifying and intensifying. At the same time, public school districts are facing increasing resource constraints, including declining enrollment, teacher workforce shortages, and reduced federal funding. These conditions make the need to prioritize the most effective strategies for…

Some researchers have taken evidence-based practices (EBPs) as the main solution for enhancing the learning outcomes of students with disabilities. The manner in which the application of EBPs assumes teaching strategies to be aligned with students' learning problems or disability situations betrays a mechanical approach to dealing with issues of…

Educators--and all adults in the school--are critical for fostering students' self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Educators can teach and model SEL in lessons; for example, promoting critical thinking in a math lesson and encouraging students to engage with challenging content.…

The contemporary social, economic, and cultural conditions within and outside the academy prompt important questions about the role of research in education policy and practice. Scholars have framed research-practice partnerships (RPPs) as a strategy to promote evidence-based decision-making in education. In this chapter, I interrogate the notion…

The innovations in this volume instill a sense of optimism about how special education professionals might improve outcomes for students with disabilities. Although many interventions illustrate scientific progress toward an evidence-based profession, many special educators may find it challenging to discriminate between scientifically validated…

There are longstanding calls for inclusive education for all regardless of student need or teacher capacity to meet those needs. Unfortunately, there are little empirical data to support full inclusion for all students and even less information on the role of data-based decision making in inclusive education specifically, even though there is…

Data from multiple school sources, including informant ratings, systematic direct observations (SDOs), and school wide data (e.g., office disciplinary referrals [ODRs]) are routinely used to guide decision making in the delivery of evidence based practices for students with externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Over 50 years of…

The goal of this investigation was to address gaps in the literature regarding dual-language learning in children with Down syndrome (DS). The investigators examined the outcomes of a dual-language narrative intervention and cross-language transfer in a bilingual (Spanish-English) adolescent with DS. Results revealed moderate to large effects in…

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…

Response to intervention (RtI) is touted as an equity-focused provision of special education policy that holds promise for reducing overrepresentation and providing academic opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. However, teachers working to implement RtI have encountered complex challenges that stifle equitable…

One of the most challenging issues for online courseware engineering is to maintain the quality of instructional components, such as written text, video, and assessments. Learning engineers would like to know how individual instructional components contributed to students' learning. However, it is a hard task because it requires significant…

Schools are increasingly finding ways to improve administrative decision-making and student success through data, experimentation, and evidence, but they face clear and persistent obstacles. This leads to a key question: how can colleges and universities best drive student success through data and evidence? To begin to answer this question, focus…

Citizens often face dilemmas where they need to make decisions that impact our lives and are related to science and religion. For example, genetic cloning, nuclear energy and climate change can potentially appeal to moral and religious values as well as scientific knowledge. The ability to coordinate knowledge and values in reaching justified…

Research has identified evidenced-based practices and programs that are successful for increasing the learning outcomes of students with disabilities which in turn helps narrow the achievement gap between the student subgroup and non-disabled peers. Employing the identified practices has produced inconsistent results and led to a closer…

Beginning with the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 (NCLB) and reinforced by the "Education Sciences Reform Act" of 2002 (ESRA), the federal government established explicit expectations for the role of research in informing decisions about education programs, policies, and practice, and it also specified new expectations for…