James Lindsay

Associated IES Content

report Descriptive Study

Supports Associated with Teacher Retention in Michigan

Statewide teacher shortages are hindering Michigan's efforts to ensure that all students have equitable access to qualified teachers. Implementing teacher supports--which may be policies, practices, or programs--to increase teacher retention offers a way to alleviate shortages. This study identified supports implemented by local education agencies (traditional school districts and charter schools) that are associated with teacher retention. The study examined local teacher retention rates fro...
Sep 20, 2021
report Impact Study

Indiana and Minnesota Students Who Focused on Career and Technical Education in High School: Who Are They, and What Are Their College and Employment Outcomes?

In Indiana and Minnesota the state education agency, state higher education agency, and the state workforce agency have collaborated to develop career and technical education courses intended to improve high school students' college and career readiness. These agencies partnered with the Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest to examine whether high school graduates in each state who completed a large number of career and technical education courses in a single career-oriented program of stu...
Jun 01, 2021
report Descriptive Study

Michigan Teachers Who Are Not Teaching: Who Are They, and What Would Motivate Them to Teach?

Statewide teacher shortages in Michigan are impeding efforts to ensure all students equitable access to qualified teachers. To alleviate shortages, education leaders have considered recruiting certified teachers who are not currently teaching (both those who have never taught and those who left teaching). This study analyzed teacher certification and employment data and data from a survey of certified teachers who were not teaching in a Michigan public school in 2017/18 to gather information ...
Apr 01, 2021
report Systematic Literature Review

Evidence-Supported Interventions Associated with Black Students' Education Outcomes: Findings from a Systematic Review of Research

REL Midwest conducted a systematic review of research on interventions that may improve academic outcomes for Black students. The review entailed a search for studies that provide evidence at Tier I (strong evidence), Tier II (moderate evidence), or Tier III (promising evidence) according to the Every Student Succeeds Act, and explicitly mention associations between an intervention and Black students' achievement in math or reading, dropout rates, or graduation rates. After screening 3,917 st...
Feb 01, 2018
report Descriptive Study

Predicting Early College Success for Indiana's High School Class of 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between receiving Pell Grants and 21st Century Scholarships and early college success among the 2014 cohort of Indiana public high school graduates entering public Indiana colleges in the fall after graduation. Early college success for these students was defined using three measures plus a composite of those measures: whether students took only nonremedial coursework in their first semester of college, whether they earned all attempte...
Jan 01, 2018
Blog

Policymaking in Indiana benefits from cross-agency data collaboration

The Indiana Network of Knowledge (INK), part of the state's Management Performance Hub, develops structures, rules, and processes for the state's longitudinal data system. Using data from this system, REL Midwest partnered with INK to explore the relationship between financial aid and early college success for disadvantaged students.
Date published:
Oct 18, 2017
report Impact Study

Impacts of Ramp-Up to Readiness(tm) after one year of implementation

College education is fundamental to students' upward mobility, states' economic growth, and the country's economic competitiveness. Researchers have forecast that 63 percent of future jobs will require a college degree, yet in the coming years the United States will likely produce 3 million fewer college graduates than are needed to fill workforce demand. With these statistics and projections in mind, policymakers are placing greater emphasis on motivating high school students to attend colle...
Mar 01, 2017
resource Other Resource

Strategies for estimating teacher supply and demand using student and teacher data

Every year the U.S. Department of Education reports for each state in the country the grade levels, subject areas, and geographic areas that have experienced teacher shortages (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, 2015). A teacher shortage occurs when the number of teachers available in a specific grade, subject matter or discipline classification, or geographic area--teacher supply--is less than the number of teachers required in that grade, subject matter or disc...
Dec 01, 2016
report Descriptive Study

Measuring the Implementation Fidelity of the Response to Intervention Framework in Milwaukee Public Schools

Many schools identified by states as needing improvement through their Elementary and Secondary Education Act waivers have selected Response to Intervention (RTI), a three-tiered instruction program sometimes referred to as tiered levels of instruction, as one of their main strategies for improving school performance and closing achievement gaps. Yet research on the effects of tiered interventions in school settings is thin. Most studies that show strong impacts have focused on small samples ...
Nov 01, 2016
report Descriptive Study

An examination of the movement of educators within and across three Midwest Region states

Education leaders have expressed concern about educators' moving to different schools--within the same state or in another state--because these moves create costs for the home district and have potential impacts on the equitable distribution of effective educators among schools. However, many states do not routinely monitor mobility among educators. Such was the case in Minnesota in fall 2012, when Minnesota members of the Midwest Educator Effectiveness Research Alliance requested that Region...
Nov 01, 2016
report Descriptive Study

Identifying early warning indicators in three Ohio school districts

In partnership with the Midwest Dropout Prevention Research Alliance the study team used student-level data and a five-step process to identify the most accurate indicators of students' failure to graduate from high school on time. Student-level data came from attendance records, transcripts, and discipline records of grade 8 and 9 students in three Ohio school districts. The study found that the most accurate early warning indicators of students being off track for graduating on time vary by...
Jul 01, 2016
report Descriptive Study

Ramping up for college readiness in Minnesota high schools: Implementation of a schoolwide program

The College Readiness Consortium at the University of Minnesota has developed Ramp-Up to Readiness(tm) (Ramp-Up), a schoolwide advisory program to increase students' likelihood of college enrollment and completion by enhancing five dimensions of college readiness (academic, admissions, career, financial, and personal-social) among students in middle schools and high schools. The program has been piloted in 52 middle and high schools throughout Minnesota, but few data are available on the prog...
Jun 01, 2016
report Descriptive Study

Who will succeed and who will struggle? Predicting early college success with Indiana's Student Information System

This study examined whether data on Indiana high school students, their high schools, and the Indiana public colleges and universities in which they enroll predict their academic success during the first two years in college. The researchers obtained student-level, school-level, and university-related data from Indiana's state longitudinal data system on the 68,802 students who graduated high school in 2010. For the 32,564 graduates who first entered a public 2-year or 4-year college, the res...
Mar 01, 2015
report Descriptive Study

The Utility of Teacher and Student Surveys in Principal Evaluations: An Empirical Investigation

This study examined whether adding student and teacher survey measures to existing principal evaluation measures increases the overall power of the principal evaluation model to explain variation in student achievement across schools. The study was conducted using data from 2011-12 on 39 elementary and secondary schools within a midsize urban school district in the Midwest. The research team used the results of the district's Tripod student and teacher surveys to construct six school-level me...
Nov 01, 2014
report Impact Study

Evaluation of the Content Literacy Continuum: Report on Program Impacts, Program Fidelity, and Contrast

This report presents the findings of a rigorous experimental impact evaluation and implementation study of one such intervention, the Content Literacy Continuum (CLC), developed by researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. This evaluation of CLC was conducted by three partnering organizations: REL Midwest, MDRC, and Survey Research Management. Thirty-three high schools in nine districts across four Midwestern states agreed to participate in this evaluation, and ...
Dec 01, 2012