Ongoing professional development is a critical component of high-quality early childhood education systems. To guide the content of such professional development, teacher and classroom quality assessments are often used. These assessments generally address universal or tier 1 instruction but omit information to guide teachers' practices to support…

Members of the Data Science Program at George Washington University (GWU) designed and implemented a tuition-free two-week summer camp at GWU for high-school students from the Washington Metro Area. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of the Chief Information Officer and his staff were our main partners in the project. The…

In the coming years, public programs will capture even more and richer data than they do now, including data from web-based tools used by participants in employment services, from tablet-based educational curricula, and from electronic health records for Medicaid beneficiaries. Program evaluators seeking to take full advantage of these data…

National College Access Network (NCAN) has heard repeatedly and consistently over the years that one of the best aspects of network membership is the ability to collaborate with and learn from other members. In an effort to further the transfer of ideas, in the summer of 2016 NCAN hosted a series of four Idea Incubators across the country, which…

The authors present preliminary insights from a qualitative action research project focused on refining the assessment practices of a first-year retention program at a large research university. Findings suggest the need for continued attention to the assessment cultures, especially interrogation and revision of current assessment attitudes,…

The report "How a Federal Grant Program Is Training and Supporting Educators of English Learners" examines the extent to which National Professional Development (NPD) grantees implemented their projects in ways aligned with program objectives, drawing primarily on a survey of all 2016 and 2017 NPD grantees. This document provides…

The purpose of this process evaluation was to evaluate how classroom teachers, campus administrators, and instructional staff differ in their perception of data usage for educational improvement in a large suburban Independent School District (ISD) in Southeast Texas. The researcher was granted permission by the superintendent of the school…

Attention to mixed methods studies research has increased in recent years, particularly among funding agencies that increasingly require a mixed methods approach for program evaluation. At the same time, researchers operating within large-scale, rapid-turnaround research projects are faced with the reality that collection and analysis of large…

Realist evaluation (RE) is a research design increasingly used in program evaluation, that aims to explore and understand the influence of context and underlying mechanisms on intervention or program outcomes. Several methodological challenges, however, are associated with this approach. This article summarizes RE key principles and examines some…

School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) are an integral part of schools across the United States. When implementing SWPBIS, academic achievement, emotional regulation, prosocial behavior increases while behavioral problems, bullying, exclusionary discipline teacher stress and teacher burnout decrease. Despite the…

Accountability and rigor in teacher education have been the focus of recent policy initiatives. Thus, data use practices have become increasingly critical to informing program improvement. Educational researchers have established self-study as a research methodology to intentionally be used by teacher educators to improve their practice. The…

A core feature of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is the collection, summary, and use of data for iterative decision-making. The initial design of support and the adaptations that make behavior support match cultural, organizational, and personal needs require that a support team have functional information to guide…

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is an essential element for generating credible and actionable evidence on Extension programs. This paper offers a discussion of ECB efforts in Cooperative Extension and how such efforts enable Extension professionals to collect and use credible and actionable evidence on the quality and impacts of programs.…

Nearly three-quarters of US adults use at least one social media site (Pew Research, 2019 & 2021). The consistency of US adults reporting social media use indicates a dependable population base to engage in health education. Based on this data, social media has become a community for health educators to perform essentials of their professional…

Governments and educational authorities around the world are emphasizing performance evaluation of educational systems. Opinion Mining (OM) has gained acceptance among experts in various regions, including the preparation space. The proposed model involves Two modules: the data preprocessing module and the opinion mining module. The main objective…