Research Findings: Shared book reading provides a meaningful context for rich conversations to occur between a child and an adult and offers opportunities for children to be exposed to a range of vocabulary and concepts that often extend beyond their everyday experiences. Few studies have examined parent-child shared book reading as a context for…

Afterschool programs have been operating for decades in communities across the country, and federal investment in afterschool has increased dramatically since the mid-1990s. However, even more investment in the field of afterschool, which includes before-school, afterschool and summer learning programs, is needed to keep up with the growing…

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project is the first major opportunity to use a behavioral economics lens to look at programs that serve poor and vulnerable people in the United States. Sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S.…

In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation extended grants to three educational organizations working to develop or enhance competency-based approaches in large, urbanized school systems. The grant initiative, called Project Mastery, funded the development of technology-enhanced tools, including curriculum materials and online learning…

In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created the Project Mastery grant program to support competency-based education initiatives in large school systems that serve a high proportion of disadvantaged youth. Competency-based education meets students where they are academically, provides students with opportunities for choice, and awards…

Catch Up® Numeracy is a one to one intervention for learners who are struggling with numeracy. It consists of two 15-minute sessions per week, delivered by teaching assistants (TAs). The approach is based on research indicating that numeracy is not a single skill, but a composite of several component skills that are relatively discrete. The…

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is a writing process model in which students are encouraged to plan, draft, edit, and revise their writing. In this evaluation 23 primary schools and their Year 6 teachers in the Calderdale area of West Yorkshire were randomly allocated to receive training in the SRSD approach from an external consultant.…

Policy Studies Associates (PSA) is conducting a five-year evaluation of the implementation and impact of the national demonstration of a model for expanded learning time developed by "The After-School Corporation" (TASC). This model, called "ExpandED Schools," aims to transform the educational experiences of students in ways…

The Nebraska Early Childhood Coach (ECC) training was a 3 day (8 hours) professional development event sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Education, Office of Child Development in 2009-2010. Sixty-five early childhood teachers and related service providers participated for the purpose of learning the basic principles and behaviors associated…

It is important for leadership teams and faculty members in higher education to create an atmosphere of trust as new and improved ideas are addressed in a professional learning community setting. Prior to the past ten years, many faculty members at the university have been accustomed to working somewhat independently in their own discipline.…

While many studies have assessed the practices, status, activities, costs, and growth of faculty development programs at community colleges, few studies have examined the impact of these programs from the perspective of the faculty members who participate in them. Accordingly, this qualitative study employed interviews with faculty members at…

Although youth mentoring is popular in the United States, and beginning to gain popularity in other countries, dissemination efforts have preceded the establishment of a strong evidence-base for this service. This is particularly true in mentoring programs that are based in schools, which constitutes the most popular form of mentoring. While many…

The School Choice Demonstration Project has published a series of reports written in the fifth and final year of its evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This review is of Report #32, which compares the test performance of MPCP students to that of a sample of students from the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The comparisons…

We assessed the relationship of level of QualityCore[R] implementation and student achievement in Algebra I. The study is based on 1,291 9th grade students in three large metropolitan school districts who took EXPLORE in the fall and the QualityCore Algebra I end-of-course assessment (EOC) in the spring. During the same period, the students' 41…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a mid-cycle examination on the effects of a nonprofit organization's middle school intervention program on sixth grade math TAKS scores at a suburban middle school in Houston, Texas. This study examined the effectiveness of two of the project goals in the first year of a two-year implementation: Increased…