During the 2013-2014 school year, Austin Independent School District served more than 23,000 English language learner students in bilingual or English as a second language programs. This report summarizes these students' English language proficiency gains as well as academic performance on the state's required assessments during that school year.

Project Clarion, a Jacob K. Javits-funded project, focused on the scale-up of primary-grade science curricula. Curriculum units, based on an Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM), were developed for high-ability learners, but tried out with all students in Title I settings to study the efficacy of the units with all learners. The units focus on the…

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low…

Claims are often made about the impact of high school athletics on academic achievement without reference to empirical research on the issue. In this paper we empirically examine the relationship between the extent to which high schools have winning sports teams, offer a variety of sports options, and facilitate student participation in athletics…

To teach science writing effectively, scholars encourage combining writing to learn with applications of the science writing heuristic. How teachers learn to do so remains under-examined. This essay follows a cohort of ninth-grade science teachers who collaborated in a project to develop, test, and revise such a combination of writing prompts for…

Recently, two of the authors (Amrein-Beardsley & Collins, 2012) studied the impact of Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), a value-added model used to judge Houston teachers' performance. They examined the cases of four teachers who were terminated in summer 2011, at least in part because of their subpar EVAAS scores. Talking to…

Proponents of open educational resources claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the classroom. Over a period of two years, we worked with 20 middle and high school science teachers (collectively teaching approximately 3,900 students) who adopted open textbooks to understand the…

Although it is often recognised that testing has unintended effects, not enough intellectual curiosity has been invested in a deeper questioning of what "unintended" means. While this concept often remains dependent on an image of good, underlying, rational intentions, it underestimates the contested, controversial and socially…

With increased emphasis on accountability, the use of low-stakes test data to make high-stakes decisions about program effectiveness is on the rise. In order to make valid inferences about what students know and can do, it is crucial to understand the consequences of low and high stakes in testing contexts. As a result, with a sample comprised of…

Supervision plays a vital role in today's schools. A component of a school administrator's success is the ability to provide guidance and structure to the teachers they lead. This quantitative study compared the frequency of administrative walkthroughs conducted by principals on third and fourth grade teachers and the effects of these visits on…

School districts were faced with numerous lawsuits for violating students' due process rights in the early 1980's. In response, schools began using other disciplinary responses to discipline violators such as in-school suspension (Adams 2000; Hanson 2005). In-school suspension provided a softer and less punitive approach to discipline and allowed…

This study determined the relationship of state funding to student performance on state mandated assessments in South Dakota between the years of 2003-2009. A cohort group of 40 school districts between 200 ADM and 600 ADM who had not reorganized were selected. Data was collected using the Dakota STEP assessment portal on the South Dakota…

Written to accompany the second edition of Todd Whitaker's best-selling title, "What Great Teachers Do Differently," this study guide can be used by facilitators and participants in seminars, book study groups, or other professional development events. The variety of activities and strategies in this book will help teachers engage in critical…

Childhood exposure to even low levels of lead can adversely affect neurodevelopment, behavior, and cognitive performance. This paper investigates the link between lead exposure and student achievement in Massachusetts. Panel data analysis is conducted at the school-cohort level for children born between 1991 and 2000 and attending 3rd and 4th…

Researchers examined whether rewarding teams of teachers for student performance had an effect on student achievement or teacher practices or attitudes in a demonstration project in Round Rock, Texas. They found that the intervention had no effect in any of these areas. Students taught by teacher teams who were offered incentives scored slightly…