Employers are demanding higher skilled and better educated workers. Yet employer sentiment and the high default rate on student loans suggests a mismatch between the programs students are completing and the work they are able to find. To report on trends in postsecondary education, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) mostly relies on surveys of…

This year's Action Guide examines the need for new ways of measuring student success. Academic test scores are just one method of measuring student progress, offering an incomplete picture of student learning and growth. Educators and state leaders recognize that serving all students well requires focusing on their individual needs, including…

The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to improve student outcomes--particularly high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority students--by increasing student access to effective teaching. The RAND Corporation worked…

Continuous and discontinuous data-collection methods were compared in the context of discrete-trial programming. Archival data sets were analyzed using trial sampling (1st 5 trials, 1st 3 trials, and 1st trial only) and session sampling (every other session, every 3rd session, and every 5th session). Results showed that trial sampling…

To promote inclusivity in quantitative research about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) students, scholars must first understand how sexual orientation data are collected in higher education survey research (Garvey, 2014; Rankin & Garvey, 2015). There is one research question that guides this study: How is sexual orientation demographic…

The New York State Education Department recently passed legislation that requires school districts to implement a programmatic, data-driven approach to school counseling. This change moves the state toward comprehensive school counseling and away from traditional "guidance"; however, these policy changes often do not translate into…

This report investigates communication and data sharing between K-12 and community colleges to identify best practices. This wide-ranging topic encompassed many efforts that impact student recruitment, retention and success in their postsecondary education. To prioritize the most pressing issues, this report focuses on recent system-wide findings…

Amid rising concerns in recent decades about the performance, equity, and efficiency of education systems, policy-makers worldwide have sought to reform educational governance. Key reform elements include standardized testing, teacher monitoring and evaluation, and accountability, often in combination with other features such as decentralization…

The diversity of scholars, teachers, and practitioners in the Scholarship ofTeaching and Learning (Soll) is a strength but also makes it a complex field to understand and navigate, and perhaps even more complex to contribute to, despite its youth. Beyond the ongoing efforts to define and theorize the field, So TL needs a rigorous inventory taking…

Currently, the state of California has dedicated much focus to reducing absenteeism in schools through the In School + On Track initiative, which revitalizes efforts made to keep accurate and informative attendance data. Additionally, absenteeism has been integrated into California's Local Control and Accountability Plan to monitor district…

The resources needed to conduct high-quality and large-scale survey research are often beyond the reach of institutional researchers and higher education analysts. However, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides many national student surveys that researchers can utilize. We outline four NCES studies--the High School…

The use of machine learning and data mining techniques across many disciplines has exploded in recent years with the field of educational data mining growing significantly in the past 15 years. In this study, random forest and logistic regression models were used to construct early warning models of student success in introductory calculus-based…

Using an inquiry-based approach to address the challenge of improving schools provides opportunities for informed decision making and carries great promise for return on investment. Taking a collaborative approach toward improvement can be complex, yet also rewarding because of the opportunity to leverage the knowledge and capacity of multiple…

The purpose of this study is to compare decision trees obtained by data mining algorithms used in various areas in recent years according to different criteria. In the study, similar and different aspects of the decision trees obtained by different methods for classifying the students as successful and unsuccessful in terms of science literacy…

In Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) classrooms it may be challenging for teachers to keep awareness of certain aspects of the learning process of each small group or assess whether the enactment of the class script deviates from the original plan. Orchestration tools, aimed at supporting the management of the increasing uncertainty…