Although Oregon has made recent gains in its overall high school graduation rate, 21?percent of public school students entering grade?9 in 2014 did not graduate within four years, by 2018. To improve graduation rates, Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 98 in 2016 to fund dropout prevention and college and career readiness initiatives in high…

Disruptive behavior problems frequently emerge in the preschool years and are associated with numerous, long-term negative outcomes, including comorbid disorders. First Step is a psychosocial early intervention with substantial empirical evidence supporting its efficacy among young children (Walker et al., 2014). The present study reports on a…

In 2015 Oregon became the second state in the country to implement a statewide promise program. Its program, Oregon Promise, seeks to promote students' postsecondary attainment by covering nearly all community college tuition. This study used student data from K-12 public schools, Oregon Promise applications, and postsecondary records to examine…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a school-wide attendance and truancy intervention and universal procedures (ATI-UP) on student attendance. Student attendance was measured through average daily attendance and the percentage of students who would be considered chronically absent, i.e., missing 10% or more of school. The…

This study used a randomized controlled trial design to investigate the ROOTS curriculum, a 50-lesson kindergarten mathematics intervention. Ten ROOTS-eligible students per classroom (n = 60) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a ROOTS five-student group, a ROOTS two-student group, and a no-treatment control group. Two primary…

We describe the development and initial evaluation of the efficacy of "We Have Skills!" (WHS), a video-based social skills instructional program for early elementary school students. The components of WHS were designed to be scientifically sound, maximally useful to elementary school teachers, and effective in increasing students' social…

This article reports on the effectiveness of First Step to Success, a secondary-level intervention appropriate for students in early elementary school who experience moderate to severe behavior problems and are at risk for academic failure. The authors demonstrate the intervention's short-term effects on multiple behavioral and academic outcomes…

Over the course of several years of research, the authors have employed psychophysics, electrophysiological (ERP) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to study the development and neuroplasticity of the human brain. During this time, they observed that different brain systems and related functions display markedly different degrees or…

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the Arts for Learning (A4L) Lessons Project on the literacy and life skills of students in grades 3, 4, and 5. A4L Lessons is a supplementary literacy curriculum designed to blend the creativity and discipline of the arts with learning science to raise student achievement in reading and…

The purpose of this study was to test the promise of the NumberShire Level 1 Gaming Intervention (NS1) to accelerate math learning for first-grade students with or at risk for math difficulties. The NS1 intervention was developed through the Institute of Education Sciences, Small Business Innovation Research Program (Gause, Fien, Baker, &…

For the 2014 study, "The Iterative Development and Initial Evaluation of We Have Skills!, an Innovative Approach to Teaching Social Skills to Elementary Students", researchers examined the effects of We Have Skills! (WHS), a supplemental, video-based social skills program for early elementary students. WHS consists of three components:…

This article reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Read Well Kindergarten" (RWK), a program that focuses on the development of vocabulary, phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, and decoding. Kindergarten teachers in 24 elementary schools in New Mexico and Oregon were randomly assigned, by school, to teach RWK…

This study evaluated the relative effects of Tier II computer-assisted tutoring in small groups (Team Alphie) and one-to-one tutoring provided to struggling readers in 33 high-poverty Success for All (SFA) schools. In this year-long study, struggling readers in the Team Alphie schools were tutored in groups of 6. In the control schools, students…