As Congress considers legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, one topic of debate is the program of school improvement grants (SIGs) authorized by section 1003(g) of Title I. SIGs are intended to help to turn around low-performing schools and are part of the larger ESEA Title I program to improve…

The concept of communities of practice (CoP) was first introduced by Lave and Wenger in their short monograph, "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation." Since then, the concept has become immensely popular in a variety of disciplines. This dissertation traces the concept of CoP back to its inception and early transformation at the…

The POWERSOURCE[C] intervention is intended as a generalizable and powerful formative assessment strategy that can be integrated with any on-going mathematics curriculum to improve teachers' knowledge and practice and, in turn, student learning. Combining theory and research in cognition, assessment and learning (for both adults and students) with…

When the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) began working with Boston Public Schools (BPS) in 2005, the most pressing need articulated by the district was research and development in the area of middle school literacy. Thus SERP researchers undertook to specify more precisely what the middle school literacy problem in BPS was by…

This study examines the incentive effects of North Carolina's practice of awarding performance bonuses on test score achievement on the state tests. Bonuses were awarded based solely on whether a school exceeds a threshold on a continuous performance metric. The study uses a sharp regression discontinuity design, an approach with strong internal…

In a context where more than 1,000,000 American adolescents are processed by juvenile courts annually and approximately 160,000 are sent to residential placements, this paper examines "what works" and "what doesn't work" in reducing the criminal behavior of juvenile offenders and presents examples of government initiatives that have successfully…

The authors add to and extend the emerging evidence base of the effects of public preschool programs on child school readiness. Using a quasi-experimental, Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, they estimate the impacts of a universal preschool program on children's early numeracy, language, literacy, and executive function skills, both for the…

Since 1969, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) has improved the diets and food-related behaviors of program participants. Each year EFNEP enrolls more than half a million new program participants. In 2010, EFNEP reached 137,814 adults and 463,530 youth directly and nearly 400,000 family members indirectly. This paper…

Out-of-school time (OST) programs focused on older youth--specifically, youth in middle and high school--can help participants successfully navigate their adolescence and learn new skills well into their teens. OST programs can also help prepare older youth for a variety of new roles that they will assume as they enter college and the workforce.…

This paper presents the results from a series of surveys distributed to school personnel from three different schools throughout the Positive Behavior Support (PBS) implementation process. The surveys used in this study were designed to measure the team members' acceptability of PBS, amount of support received, and satisfaction with training as…

The purpose of this study was to design, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of incorporating an online learning community as part of a comprehensive new teacher induction program. First, the researcher created an online learning community model based on the results of a comprehensive review of literature and from the previous year's…

Previous research has found the use of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) to be effective in teaching skills to a variety of populations. Students with and without disabilities have been taught a variety of skills including social skills and core academic content using CAI. Students with moderate to severe disabilities (MSD) have been taught a…

"We know that education can be an arduous process. Countries use different approaches based on societal acceptances, but effective education always requires enormous efforts. Whether success is achieved, depends on the development of a rigorous and progressive curriculum, while at the same time providing all students the opportunity to…

A primary instructional objective of most early science programs is to foster children's scientific curiosity and question-asking skills (Jirout & Klahr, 2011). However, little is known about the relationship between curiosity, question-asking behavior, and general inquiry skills. While curiosity and question asking are invariably mentioned in…

The Multilevel Assessment of Science Standards (MASS) project is creating a new generation of technology-enhanced formative assessments that bring the best formative assessment practices into classrooms to transform what, how, when, and where science learning is assessed. The project is investigating the feasibility, utility, technical quality,…