Out-of-school time programs can enhance academic achievement by helping students learn outside the classroom.

This guide includes a set of concrete actions relating to the use of instructional and study time that are applicable to subjects that demand a great deal of content learning, including social studies, science, and mathematics.

This guide offers five recommendations to help educators effectively use data to monitor students’ academic progress and evaluate instructional practices.

Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a classroom management strategy designed to help teachers create a positive learning environment by decreasing disruptive behavior and improving social skills and prosocial behaviors among students.

Good Behavior Game is a classroom management strategy that aims to improve social skills, minimize disruptive behaviors, and create a positive learning environment. Teachers place students into teams and reward them for demonstrating appropriate behaviors and following classroom rules.

Teach For America (TFA) is a highly selective route to teacher certification that aims to place non-traditionally trained teachers in high-need public schools. Many TFA teachers hold bachelors’ degrees from selective colleges and universities, in fields outside of education. TFA teachers commit to teach for at least 2 years. TFA teachers receive 5–7 weeks of in-person training over the summer before they begin teaching, then continue to receive professional development and one-on-one coaching from TFA while teaching, in addition to support provided by their schools and districts. As full-time employees of the public schools where they work, TFA teachers receive the same salary and benefits as other first- or second-year teachers in their school or district.

The eMINTS Comprehensive Program aims to help teachers improve their practice and the outcomes of their students by offering structured professional development, coaching, and support for integrating technology into the classroom. The program’s goals include supporting teachers in using classroom technology to implement high-quality, inquiry-based learning, in which students develop understanding and knowledge of content matter by engaging in meaningful investigations that require reasoning, judgement, and decision making. The intervention can provide support to teachers in any subject area, including math, literacy, and science.

Balanced Leadership® is a professional development program for school principals and other current and aspiring school leaders in schools serving kindergarten through grade 12. School leaders participate in professional development sessions with trained facilitators over one or two years, practice what they learn between sessions, and can receive additional coaching and online support. McREL International, the company that developed the Balanced Leadership® program, based the framework and content of the professional development on research identifying key actions and behaviors of school leaders that are associated with improved student outcomes.

MyTeachingPartner–Secondary (MTP-S) is a professional development program that aims to increase student learning and development through improved teacher–student interactions. Through the program, middle and high school teachers access a video library featuring examples of high-quality interactions and receive individualized, web-based coaching approximately twice per month during the school year. MTP-S uses the secondary school version of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System®–Secondary (CLASS-S) to define and observe effective teaching practices.

Literacy Design Collaborative provides professional development, coaching, and resources to support teachers to work collaboratively in their schools to design and use high-quality, standards-aligned literacy instruction materials aimed at building students’ reading, research, and writing skills. Literacy Design Collaborative guides teachers to implement literacy modules they can use to teach students the content and literacy skills needed to complete a culminating writing task. Teachers implement existing modules and design new ones. Teachers across content areas—including English language arts, social studies, and science—can use the Literacy Design Collaborative program.

The NISL program (formerly the NISL Executive Development Program) is a professional development program that aims to develop effective, strategic school leaders focused on preparing schools to provide high-quality instruction in a supportive learning environment. NISL is organized around 12 two-day professional development course units that are offered over 12–15 months. Each unit offers tools and diagnostic instruments to assess participants’ leadership skills and school climates. As part of the program, school leaders learn how to apply NISL’s instructional coaching model with teachers in their schools. The coaching model is a formal process in which school leaders work with teachers over multiple cycles of coaching to improve teacher effectiveness. The model is designed to support teachers in core content areas like English language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science.

MyTeachingPartner™ Pre-K is a professional development program for early education teachers that incorporates four resources, used individually or together, to provide teachers with the knowledge and skills to engage in more effective student interactions. First, a video library provides annotated examples of high-quality teacher–student interactions. Second, an interactive training uses the video library to practice and discuss effective teacher–student interactions. Third, a three-credit college course aims to improve teachers’ knowledge about interactions that improve student learning. Finally, a trained coach offers web-mediated coaching on classroom instruction every 2 weeks during the school year. The activities in MyTeachingPartner™ Pre-K are structured according to the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), a teacher observation instrument that measures quality of instruction.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) establishes standards for accomplished teachers and awards professional certification to teachers who can demonstrate that their teaching practices meet those standards. Educators and experts in child development and related fields established the organization, and these experts work to develop and refine the standards for accomplished teaching based on the knowledge and skills that effective teachers demonstrate. The standards reflect five core propositions: (1) effective teachers are committed to students and their learning, (2) effective teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students, (3) effective teachers manage and monitor student learning, (4) effective teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience, and (5) effective teachers are members of learning communities. Those seeking certification from the NBPTS must complete a computer-based assessment and three portfolio entries. The certification process can take 1 to 5 years.

TNTP Teaching Fellows is a highly selective route to teacher certification that aims to prepare people to teach in high-need public schools. The program recruits professionals seeking to change careers and recent college graduates who are not certified teachers. TNTP Teaching Fellows expects its participants to teach for many years, but does not require them to make a minimum time commitment to teaching. Program participants complete online coursework and receive 5–7 weeks of in-person training focused on foundational teaching skills during the summer before they begin teaching. They must demonstrate mastery of these core skills to be eligible to teach. They receive continued professional development and coaching from TNTP Teaching Fellows during their first year of teaching, and additional support provided by their schools and districts. As full-time employees of the public schools in which they work, new TNTP Teaching Fellows teachers receive the same salary and benefits as other beginning teachers in their school district.

The New Teacher Center (NTC) Induction Model is a comprehensive and systemic approach to support beginning teachers (i.e., teachers new to the profession). The induction model aims to accelerate the effectiveness of beginning teachers at increasing student learning by providing one-on-one mentoring and professional development in a supportive school environment. The NTC works with school districts and state departments of education to design, develop, and implement induction programs that are aligned with both district priorities and NTC standards.

TAP™ (formerly known as the Teacher Advancement Program) is a comprehensive educator effectiveness program that aims to improve student achievement through supports and incentives that attract, retain, develop, and motivate effective teachers. The program provides teachers with leadership opportunities and associated salary increases; ongoing, school-based professional development; rigorous evaluations; and annual performance bonuses based on a combination of teacher value added to student achievement and observations of their classroom teaching.

The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol® (SIOP®) is a framework for planning and delivering instruction in content areas such as science, history, and mathematics to English language learners as well as other students. The goal of SIOP® is to help teachers integrate academic language development into their lessons, allowing students to learn and practice English as it is used in the context of school, including the vocabulary used in textbooks and lectures in each academic discipline. Using this planning framework, teachers modify the way they teach so that the language they use to explain concepts and information is comprehensible to these students. SIOP® is intended to be applicable at levels of education from pre-K through community college. The SIOP® model consists of instructional strategies that cover eight aspects of lesson design and delivery: lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice and application, lesson delivery, and review and assessment. 

The purpose of this study was to examine the treatment effects of the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IY TCM), a universal classroom management intervention, on the outcomes of children with aggressive behavior in elementary school. Classroom management has been demonstrated as a factor in either escalating children's aggressive behavior or decreasing those problematic behaviors. Participants included 1,817 students (Grade K to 3) and 105 teachers from nine elementary schools in a large urban Midwestern school district. Teachers were randomly assigned to receive IY TCM or to a wait-list comparison group. The hypotheses were that baseline levels of aggression would moderate the relationship between intervention status and outcomes. Findings indicated the hypothesized moderation effect on several outcome variables; specifically, children with baseline aggression problems who were in IY TCM classrooms had significantly improved math achievement, emotional regulation, prosocial behaviors, and observed aggression in comparison to similar peers in the control classrooms. Implications for practice and future research based on the findings are discussed.

This is the final report of a large-scale independent evaluation of the Building Assets and Reducing Risks (BARR) model in ninth grade in eleven high schools in Maine, California, Minnesota, Kentucky, and Texas. This sample of schools included large and small schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas, serving students from a wide range of demographic and socio-economic backgrounds. Funded with a validation grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program and carried out by researchers at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), this evaluation used random assignment of ninth-grade students to BARR and control conditions to estimate the impacts of the BARR model after one year. The evaluation also assessed the fidelity of implementation of BARR in the eleven study schools and identified barriers to and facilitators of successful implementation. The evaluation focused on several teacher- and student-level outcomes. The teacher outcomes included measures of teacher collaboration, and use of data, among others. The academic outcomes included course failure, students' grade point average (GPA), and performance on the Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) standardized reading and mathematics assessments. Student-reported experiences included measures of supportive relationships, perceptions of teachers' expectations of them, student engagement, and others. In addition to these outcomes, the report includes impact estimates for attendance, suspensions, and persistence into 10th grade. [This report was written with Brenna O'Brien, Cheryl Graczewski, So Jung Park, Feng Liu, Ethan Adelman-Sil, Lynn Hu.]

We conducted a potential efficacy trial examining the effects of classroom-wide implementation of the "Pyramid Model for Promoting Young Children's Social-Emotional Competence" on teachers' implementation of "Pyramid Model" practices and children's social-emotional skills and challenging behavior. Participants were 40 preschool teachers and 494 children. Using a randomized controlled design, 20 teachers received a professional development (PD) intervention to support their implementation of the practices. The 20 teachers in the control condition received workshops after all study-related data were collected. Teachers who received PD significantly improved their implementation of "Pyramid Model" practices relative to control teachers. Children in intervention teachers' classrooms were rated as having better social skills and fewer challenging behaviors relative to children in control teachers' classrooms. Exploratory analyses showed that children at elevated risk for behavior disorders in intervention teachers' classrooms had improvements in their observed social interaction skills relative to similar children in control teachers' classrooms.

Teach For America (TFA) and the Teaching Fellows programs are an important and growing source of teachers of hard-to-staff subjects in high-poverty schools, but comprehensive evidence of their effectiveness has been limited. This report presents findings from the first large-scale random assignment study of secondary math teachers from these programs. The study separately examined the effectiveness of TFA and Teaching Fellows teachers, comparing secondary math teachers from each program with other secondary math teachers teaching the same math courses in the same schools. The study focused on secondary math because this is a subject in which schools face particular staffing difficulties.The study had two main findings, one for each program studied: (1) TFA teachers were more effective than the teachers with whom they were compared. On average, students assigned to TFA teachers scored 0.07 standard deviations higher on end-of-year math assessments than students assigned to comparison teachers, a statistically significant difference. This impact is equivalent to an additional 2.6 months of school for the average student nationwide; and (2) Teaching Fellows were neither more nor less effective than the teachers with whom they were compared. On average, students of Teaching Fellows and students of comparison teachers had similar scores on end-of-year math assessments. By providing rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of secondary math teachers from TFA and the Teaching Fellows programs, the study can shed light on potential approaches for improving teacher effectiveness in hard-to-staff schools and subjects. The study findings can provide guidance to school principals faced with the choice of hiring teachers who have entered the profession via different routes to certification. The findings can also aid policymakers and funders of teacher preparation programs by providing information on the effectiveness of teachers from various routes to certification that use different methods to identify, attract, train, and support their teachers. Seven appendixes present: (1) Supplementary Technical Information on Study Design and Data Collection; (2) Supplementary Information on Analytic Methods; (3) Supplementary Information on Teach For America and Teaching Fellows Programs; (4) Teach For America and Teaching Fellows Teachers Compared with Comparison Teachers by Entry Route (Alternative or Traditional); (5) Supplementary Information on Teach For America and Teaching Fellows Teachers Compared with Comparison Teachers; (6) Supplementary Analyses of the Impacts of Teach For America and Teaching Fellows Teachers; and (7) Supplementary Findings on Factors Associated with Teacher Effectiveness. (Contains 96 tables, 21 figures, and 30 footnotes.)

This paper reports on a randomized experiment to study the impact of an alternative teacher preparation program, Teach for America (TFA), on student achievement and other outcomes. We found that TFA teachers had a positive impact on math achievement and no impact on reading achievement. The size of the impact on math scores was about 15 percent of a standard deviation, equivalent to about one month of instruction. The general conclusions did not differ substantially for subgroups of teachers, including novice teachers, or for subgroups of students. We found no impacts on other student outcomes such as attendance, promotion, or disciplinary incidents, but TFA teachers were more likely to report problems with student behavior than were their peers. The findings contradict claims that such programs allowing teachers to bypass the traditional route to the classroom harm students.

Purpose: The purpose of this two-year study was to assess the impact of the CORE program, a model that integrates technology and active learning modules in high schools by providing multi-disciplinary teams of teachers and administrators with professional development and resources to support the development of students' non-cognitive skills and increase their college and career readiness. A fidelity of implementation study was also conducted to assess the seven key program components were being implemented as intended. Methods: This Randomized Control Trial (RCT) study followed a cohort of 9th and 10th grade high school students in 28 treatment and control schools; students completed the CWRA+ assessment and non-cognitive skills, engagement, and self-efficacy scales at three timepoints. Using the hierarchical linear model (HLM), the study assessed one-year program impact and two-year program impact. The two-year program impact model suffered a high attrition (due to COVID19) and the study became a quasi-experimental design (QED) study after propensity score matching analysis was applied. Results: Findings highlight how students at CORE schools showed increased scores across the two-year program intervention. Specifically, standardized effects on CWRA+ scores, the non-cognitive skills scale, engagement scale, and efficacy scale were respectively, 0.22, 0.22, 0.23, and 0.32. The effect size for the efficacy scale (0.32) was large enough to be considered important. To selectively mention exploratory findings, the level of program exposure both in terms of whether students were enrolled in the program-trained teachers' courses and whether teachers participated in PD activities seemed correlated with a higher growth in student's CWRA+ scores. Another set of exploratory findings implied that the program impact may interact with demographic characteristics of students. Findings demonstrate a need for further testing of differences between student subgroups based on demographics, as well as the importance of buy-in from program implementers to provide the customized PD support that educators and partners at rural schools need to more effectively serve their students. The exploratory findings suggested that the program exposure of teachers and students may be a key to enhance the CORE program impact. [This report was submitted by the ICF Evaluation Team.]

The 3-year Pennsylvania Dyslexia Screening and Early Literacy Intervention Pilot Program (Pilot) began in 2015-16 (Year 1) with the kindergarten class of 2015-16 (Cohort 1). In 2016-17 (Year 2), the Pilot was implemented with Cohort 1 students, now in first grade, and a second cohort of kindergarteners (Cohort 2). A third cohort will be added in 2017-18. The Pilot provides two levels of support: (1) a classroom program, which supplements core instruction for all students, with an increased focus on phonemic awareness and multisensory structured language (MSL), and (2) an MSL intervention to provide extra instruction for students identified as needing more support based on early literacy screening in the winter of kindergarten. Both levels of support are meant to affect special education referrals and students' literacy skills, measured by the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Next benchmark assessments (only DIBELS data are available at this time). This report presents key findings from Year 2. The effectiveness of the classroom program was evaluated using a school-level matched design, in which the performance of students in the 21 Pilot schools was compared with the performance of students in 21 matched comparison (Comparison) schools identified through Mahalanobis distance matching. These analyses suggest that both Pilot cohorts (21 schools) outperformed the Comparison sample on some spring 2017 (Year 2) measures (nonsense word fluency for both cohorts and letter naming fluency for Cohort 2). This may be because of improved implementation in Year 2, and is particularly encouraging given the Comparison sample's participation in another literacy initiative, which may result in an underestimation of Pilot program effects compared with typical schools (which may not use universal screening to inform core instruction and identify students to receive supplemental intervention). The effectiveness of the MSL intervention was assessed using a regression discontinuity (RD) design, in which Pilot students eligible for the intervention were compared with similarly performing students in the same schools who were not eligible for the intervention. Although these analyses yielded no positive effects, exploratory analyses suggest that the intervention may have contributed to improved performance for Cohort 1 Pilot intervention students compared to similar Comparison students. Exploratory analyses also found an association between intervention hours and outcomes, suggesting increased dosage might yield stronger intervention effects (most schools did not meet target hours). These findings suggest that the combination of enhanced core instruction and supplemental MSL intervention improve some student outcomes in school settings, warranting further study. The Pilot's final evaluation report will cover the third year of Pilot implementation, allowing comparisons across three cohorts and expanding the Pilot to second grade (Cohort 1), and consider other variables such as special education status. This report includes numerous exhibits to explain implementation, samples, and findings, and includes the following appendices: (1) Study Design; (2) Matching to Establish Comparison Sample; (3) Supplementary Implementation Information; (4) Comparisons of Analysis Samples; (5) Sample Parent Notification and Opt-Out Template Provided by PDE to Pilot Districts; (6) Technical Information.

This article presents the findings of an evaluation of the eMINTS (enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies) professional development program. eMINTS is an intensive teacher professional development program designed to promote inquiry-based learning, support high-quality lesson design, build community among students and teachers, and create technology-rich learning environments. This evaluation included 60 high-poverty rural schools across Missouri that were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions and a control condition, with approximately 200 teachers and 3,000 students in the 2011-2012 baseline academic year. The researchers conclude that after 3 years, the eMINTS treatment group and an eMINTS treatment group with an additional year of Intel support resulted in changed teacher instructional behaviors and increased student achievement in mathematics.

We study the effectiveness of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in Washington State, which has one of the largest populations of National Board-Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in the nation. Based on value-added models in math and reading, we find that NBPTS-certified teachers are about 0.01-0.05 student standard deviations more effective than non-NBCTS with similar levels of experience. Certification effects vary by subject, grade level, and certification type, with greater effects for middle school math certificates. We find mixed evidence that teachers who pass the assessment are more effective than those who fail, but that the underlying NBPTS assessment score predicts student achievement.

My Teaching Partner-Secondary (MTP-S) is a web-mediated coaching intervention, which an initial randomized trial, primarily in middle schools, found to improve teacher-student interactions and student achievement. Given the dearth of validated teacher development interventions showing consistent effects, we sought to both replicate and extend these findings with a modified version of the program in a predominantly high school population, and in a more urban, sociodemographically diverse school district. MTP-S produced substantial gains in student achievement across 86 secondary school classrooms involving 1,194 students. Gains were robust across subject areas and equivalent to moving the average student from the 50th to the 59th percentile in achievement scores. Results suggest that MTP-S can enhance student outcomes across diverse settings and implementation modalities.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested in the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) as one strategy to support teachers' and students' transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts. This report provides an early look at the implementation of LDC in sixth-grade Advanced Reading classes in a large Florida district, and the effectiveness of the intervention in this setting. The study found that teachers understood LDC and implemented it with fidelity and that curriculum modules were well crafted. Teachers also generally reported positive attitudes about the effectiveness of LDC and its usefulness as a tool for teaching CCSS skills. Although implementation results were highly positive, quasi-experimental analyses employing matched control group and regression discontinuity designs found no evidence of an impact of LDC on student performance on state reading or district writing assessments. Furthermore, students generally performed at basic levels on assessments designed to align with the intervention, suggesting the challenge of meeting CCSS expectations. Exploratory analyses suggest that LDC may have been most effective for higher achieving students. However understandable, the findings thus suggest that, in the absence of additional scaffolding and supports for low-achieving students, LDC may be gap enhancing. Two appendices are included: (1) LDC Instruments and Rubrics; and (2) Summary Report: Developing an Assignment Measure to Assess Quality of LDC Modules (Abby Reisman, Joan Herman, Rebecca Luskin, and Scott Epstein).

The current teacher workforce is younger, less experienced, more likely to turnover, and more diverse in preparation experiences than the workforce of two decades ago. Research shows that inexperienced teachers are less effective, but we know little about the effectiveness of teachers with different types of preparation. In this study, we classify North Carolina public school teachers into "portals"--fixed and mutually exclusive categories that capture teachers' formal preparation and qualifications upon first entering the profession--and estimate the adjusted average test score gains of students taught by teachers from each portal. Compared with undergraduate-prepared teachers from in-state public universities, (a) out-of-state undergraduate-prepared teachers are less effective in elementary grades and high school, (b) alternative entry teachers are less effective in high school, and (c) Teach For America corps members are more effective in STEM subjects and secondary grades.

In 2007, using funds from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) and private foundations, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began piloting its version of a schoolwide reform model called the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). Under the TAP model, teachers can earn extra pay and take on increased responsibilities through promotion (to mentor teacher or master teacher), and they become eligible for annual performance bonuses based on a combination of their contribution to student achievement (known as "value added") and observed performance in the classroom. The model calls for weekly meetings of teachers and mentors ("cluster groups"), and regular classroom observations by a school leadership team to help teachers meet their performance goals. The idea behind TAP is that giving teachers performance incentives, along with tools to track their performance and improve instruction, will help schools attract and retain talented teachers and help all teachers raise student achievement. This report is the last in a series of reports providing evidence on the impacts of CPS' version of TAP, called "Chicago TAP." It presents findings from the four-year implementation period, with special emphasis on the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years, the third and fourth years of the program's rollout in Chicago. Earlier reports (Glazerman et al. 2009; Glazerman and Seifullah 2010) provide detailed data on each of the first two years of the program, respectively. CPS implemented Chicago TAP as a pilot program intended for 40 high-need schools. The program began in 10 schools in the first year (cohort 1) with a rollout plan to add 10 more Chicago TAP schools (cohorts 2, 3, and 4) in each year of the TIF grant's four-year implementation period. The authors address three research questions regarding Chicago TAP: (1) How was the program implemented?; (2) What impact did the program have on student achievement?; and (3) What impact did the program have on teacher retention within schools? To assess the first year under Chicago TAP for schools that began the program in fall 2009 (cohort 3), the authors looked at how teacher development and compensation practices in Chicago TAP schools differ from practices normally implemented in CPS schools. The authors found that teachers in Chicago TAP schools reported receiving significantly more mentoring support than teachers in similar non-TAP (control) schools. This finding reflects the fact that under the Chicago TAP model, teachers are guided by mentor teachers, and cluster groups meet weekly. They also found that veteran teachers in Chicago TAP schools were more likely than their control group counterparts to provide mentoring support to their colleagues; this finding is consistent with the fact that under Chicago TAP, teachers have the opportunity to assume leadership roles and responsibilities as Chicago TAP mentor or lead teachers. Teachers in Chicago TAP schools (veteran and novice) were aware of their eligibility for performance-based compensation. The authors found that the amount of compensation they expected approached the amount that was eventually paid out; that is, the average expectation was about $900, and the actual amount paid out in bonuses to this group was an average of about $1,100 per teacher. They generally did not find evidence of an impact of Chicago TAP on teacher attitudes or school climate. While the introduction of Chicago TAP led to real changes inside the schools, the program did not consistently raise student achievement as measured by growth in Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) scores. The authors found evidence of both positive and negative test score impacts in selected subjects, years, and cohorts of schools, but overall there was no detectable impact on math, reading, or science achievement that was robust to different methods of estimation. For example, impacts on science scores overall (across years and cohorts) were positive, but not statistically significant unless they used one particular matching method that excluded some Chicago TAP schools from the analysis. The authors did find evidence suggesting that Chicago TAP increased schools' retention of teachers, although the impacts were not uniform or universal across years, cohorts, and subgroups of teachers. They found that teachers who were working in Chicago TAP schools in 2007 returned in each of the following three years at higher rates than teachers in comparable non-TAP schools. For example, the authors found that 67 percent of classroom teachers in cohort 1 schools in fall 2007 returned to their same school in fall 2010 compared to about 56 percent of teachers in non-TAP schools, an impact of nearly 12 percentage points. In other words, teachers in Chicago TAP schools in fall 2007 were about 20% more likely than teachers in comparison schools to be in those same schools three years later. When the authors looked at teachers who were working in schools that started Chicago TAP in later years, some of the impact estimates were not statistically significant. The authors also found some evidence of impacts on retention for subgroups of teachers, such as those with less experience, but the pattern of findings was not consistent. When they considered retention of teachers in the district, the authors did not find consistent evidence of a measurable impact. Given that Chicago TAP is a school-specific program, their main focus was on school-level retention, as opposed to retention in the district. Appended are: (1) Propensity Score Matching; and (2) Supplemental Tables. (Contains 32 tables, 6 figures and 27 footnotes.) [For related reports, see "An Evaluation of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in Chicago: Year One Impact Report. Final Report" (ED507502) and "An Evaluation of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in Chicago: Year Two Impact Report" (ED510712).]

Improving teaching quality is widely recognized as critical to addressing deficiencies in secondary school education, yet the field has struggled to identify rigorously evaluated teacher-development approaches that can produce reliable gains in student achievement. A randomized controlled trial of My Teaching Partner-Secondary--a Web-mediated approach focused on improving teacher-student interactions in the classroom--examined the efficacy of the approach in improving teacher quality and student achievement with 78 secondary school teachers and 2237 students. The intervention produced substantial gains in measured student achievement in the year following its completion, equivalent to moving the average student from the 50th to the 59th percentile in achievement test scores. Gains appeared to be mediated by changes in teacher-student interaction qualities targeted by the intervention. [For a related What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report, see ED557783.]

Teach For America (TFA) selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. This paper is the first study that examines TFA effects in high school. We use rich longitudinal data from North Carolina and estimate TFA effects through cross-subject student and school fixed effects models. We find that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified in field. Such effects offset or exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in science. (Contains 1 figure, 14 tables and 14 footnotes.)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Literacy-Infused Science Using Technology Innovation Opportunity (LISTO) validation project (Valid 45). LISTO was funded by the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund and involved a multi-year intervention that provided virtual professional development and coaching, and literacy-infused science curricula to fifth-grade science teachers who taught predominantly low-income students and in predominantly rural public schools in Texas. The overarching goal of LISTO is to validate, via a 5-year longitudinal randomized controlled trial (RCT) study, literacy-infused science (LIS) instructional and curricular innovations to increase instructional capacity of teachers and to improve students' science and reading/writing literacy achievement in rural/non-rural schools for economically challenged (EC), inclusive of English language learners (ELL) students. Outcomes collected in the 2017-18 school year were considered to be exploratory, given the timing of Hurricane Harvey, which impacted Texas in August of 2017. Outcomes in the 2018-19 school year served as the confirmatory contrasts. LISTO resulted in increased teacher capacity to implement research-based strategies while teaching science content, yet this improvement did not necessarily translate into improved student achievement in science or reading. The LISTO professional development and coaching covered pedagogical strategies for teaching science, including those that have been shown to improve literacy and be particularly effective for ELs. There was a negative impact on students' science achievement in both 2017-18 (ES = -0.10) and in 2018--19 (ES = -0.13). There was a negative program impact on students' science interest (ES = -0.14), as measured by a survey, in 2017-18, and no impact in 2018-19. These quantitative findings were in conflict with qualitative data collected from LISTO teachers, who indicated that the program led to improvements in both science vocabulary and engagement and self-efficacy in science for students. LISTO had positive effects on teacher practices for a subsample of teachers, specifically on increased delivery of research-based instruction to teach science content as rated on a rubric by external reviewers (ES = +1.12). LISTO appeared to improve instructional practices for a sample of teachers who implemented the program for two years with complete data but did not positively impact student or teacher outcomes more broadly. However, results should be cautiously interpreted due to limitations of delayed and incomplete implementation in the first year of the project due to Hurricane Harvey. Encouragingly, teachers' overall positive reactions to the program suggest its potential to improve student affect and learning, but more extensive implementation experience by teachers and multi-year exposure by students starting from early grades may be needed to yield measurable benefits. Clearly, such focuses emerge as a highly recommended topic for future research.

Empirical Education Inc. is the independent evaluator of SRI International's 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant called Redesigning Secondary Courses to Improve Academic Outcomes for Adolescents with Disabilities and Other Underperforming Adolescents. The goal of the grant is to develop "Enhanced Units" that combine research-based content enhancement routines, collaboration strategy, and technology components for secondary U.S. History and biology classes. This report presents findings of a randomized control trial (RCT) during the 2017-18 school year. The RCT measured the impact of "Enhanced Units" on higher order content skills (as measured through unit tests) in high school biology and U.S. History classes in three districts in Virginia and California. SRI, the Center for Applied Special Education Technology (CAST), and their research and practitioner partners developed "Enhanced Units" (EU) with the goal of integrating research-based content enhancement routines with technological enhancements to improve student content learning and higher order reasoning, especially for students with disabilities or other learning challenges. This study also documents the extent to which the core components of EU were implemented with fidelity. The authors provide descriptive results on classroom practices (as measured by teacher surveys) and contextual factors that support or hinder implementation (as described during teacher interviews). Future improvements to EU should focus on answering the question: "What is/are the best way(s) for teachers to present SIM routines to their students, particularly for students with learning challenges through SIM intervention?"

This article presents findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing the impact of a novel coaching approach utilized as one element of the Double Check cultural responsivity and student engagement model. The RCT included 158 elementary and middle school teachers randomized to receive coaching or serve as comparisons; all participating teachers were exposed to school-wide professional development activities. Pre-post nonexperimental comparisons indicated improvements in self-reported culturally responsive behavior management and self-efficacy for teachers in both conditions following professional development exposure. With regard to the experimental findings, trained observers recorded significantly more proactive behavior management and anticipation of student problems by teachers, higher student cooperation, less student noncooperation, and fewer disruptive behaviors in classrooms led by coached teachers relative to comparison teachers. Taken together, the findings suggest the potential promise of coaching combined with school-wide professional development for improving classroom management practices and possibly reducing office discipline referrals among Black students.

The advancing social-communication and play (ASAP) intervention was designed as a classroom-based intervention, in which the educational teams serving preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorder are trained to implement the intervention in order to improve these children's social-communication and play skills. In this 4-year, multi-site efficacy trial, classrooms were randomly assigned to ASAP or a business-as-usual control condition. A total of 78 classrooms, including 161 children, enrolled in this study. No significant group differences were found for the primary outcomes of children's social-communication and play. However, children in the ASAP group showed increased classroom engagement. Additionally, participation in ASAP seemed to have a protective effect for one indicator of teacher burnout. Implications for future research are discussed.

The purpose of the study was to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to demonstrate efficacy of the Class-wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) program. The study was designed to replicate an initial RCT conducted by the CW-FIT developers in 1 site, with 2 additional research groups not involved in its development. The study was conducted across 3 states, in 21 culturally diverse schools, and with 83 teachers (classrooms) assigned to CW-FIT and 74 teachers (classrooms) assigned to the comparison group. The CW-FIT intervention included teaching prosocial skills and use of differential attention (teacher praise and points) for appropriate behaviors using a group contingency, class teams, goal setting, points, and rewards. Class-wide student on-task behavior improved, teacher praise and attention to appropriate behaviors increased, and reprimands decreased in the CW-FIT classes with significantly fewer changes over time for the comparison group.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a variation of the Good Behavior Game (GBG) in which teachers used ClassDojo to manage each team's progress. ClassDojo is a computer-based program that enables teachers to award students with points for demonstrating target behaviors. Dependent variables included class-wide disruptive and academically engaged behavior, teachers' ratings on the Behavior Intervention Rating Scale (BIRS), and the rate of teacher praise statements delivered in each phase. Overall, results indicated that the GBG with ClassDojo was effective at reducing disruptive behavior, increasing academically engaged behavior, and was rated as socially valid. Additionally, when the intervention was in place, increases in the amount of behavior-specific praise statements delivered were observed across all three classrooms.

Schools continue to strive for the use of evidenced-based interventions and policies to foster well-managed classrooms that promote improved student outcomes. The present study examined the effects of the Class-Wide Function-related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT), a group contingency intervention, on the on-task and disruptive behavior of elementary school students with or at risk for emotional behavior disorders (EBD). Seventeen elementary schools, 159 general education teachers, and 313 students participated in the randomized-control group design study. Fidelity of implementation was strong for intervention group teachers and was measured across groups and throughout baseline conditions. Results suggest that CW-FIT can be used to increase on-task behavior and reduce the disruptive behavior of students with or at risk for EBD. In addition, teachers in intervention classes increased praise and reduced reprimands to individual students and along with their students, reported high levels of consumer satisfaction.

Chicago Public Schools initiated the Excellence in Teaching Project, a teacher evaluation program designed to increase student learning by improving classroom instruction through structured principal-teacher dialogue. The pilot began in forty-four elementary schools in 2008-09 (cohort 1) and scaled up to include an additional forty-eight elementary schools in 2009-10 (cohort 2). Leveraging the experimental design of the roll-out, cohort 1 schools performed better in reading and math than cohort 2 schools at the end of the first year, though the math effects are not statistically significant. We find the initial improvement for cohort 1 schools remains even after cohort 2 schools adopted the program. Moreover, the pilot differentially impacted schools with different characteristics. Higher-achieving and lower-poverty schools were the primary beneficiaries, suggesting the intervention was most successful in more advantaged schools. These findings are relevant for policy makers and school leaders who are implementing evaluation systems that incorporate classroom observations.

Background/Context: Billions of dollars are spent annually on professional development (PD) for educators, yet few randomized controlled trials (RCT) have demonstrated the ultimate impact PD has on student learning. Further, while policymakers and others speak to the role schools should play in developing students' civic awareness, RCTs of PD designed to foster civic learning are rare. This randomized controlled trial contributes to the knowledge base on the effectiveness of PD designed to integrate civic learning, ethical reflection, and historical thinking skills into high school humanities courses. Focus of Study: The study examined the impact of a PD intervention in two areas: (a) teacher self-efficacy, burnout, and professional engagement and satisfaction; and (b) the academic, civic, social, and ethical competencies of 9th and 10th grade students in the teachers' classes. Population/Participants/Subjects: The study involved 113 teachers and 1,371 9th and 10th grade students in 60 high schools from eight metropolitan regions in the United States. Intervention/Program/Practice: The intervention, Facing History and Ourselves, provides PD through a five-day seminar, curricular materials, and follow-up coaching and workshops to help teachers develop their capacities to implement an interdisciplinary historical case study unit using student-centered pedagogy. Research Design: The study used a school-level, randomized, experimental design to investigate impacts of the intervention for teachers and their 9th and 10th grade students. Findings/Results: Intervention teachers showed significantly greater self-efficacy in all eight assessed domains, more positive perceptions of professional support, satisfaction and growth, and greater personal accomplishment. Intervention students demonstrated stronger skills for analyzing evidence, agency, and cause and effect on an historical understanding performance measure; greater self-reported civic efficacy and tolerance for others with different views; and more positive perceptions of the classroom climate and the opportunities afforded for engaging with civic matters. Fidelity analysis found these causal effects despite the fact that roughly half of the intervention teachers did not fully implement the program. Conclusions/Recommendations: Educators need evidence-based approaches for teaching complex social, civic, and political issues enabling students of diverse mindsets and backgrounds to engage constructively with one another while obtaining necessary skills and knowledge. These findings provide empirical support for a professional development approach that engages teachers in fostering academic and civic competencies critical to both participation in a democracy and success in college and career.

This study evaluated whether the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), a classroom teacher professional development program delivered through webcam technology literacy coaching, could provide rural classroom teachers with the instructional skills to help struggling readers progress rapidly in early reading. Fifteen rural schools were randomly assigned to the experimental or control condition. Five struggling readers and 5 non-struggling readers were randomly selected from eligible children in each classroom. There were 75 classrooms and 631 children in the study. Teachers in experimental schools used the TRI in one-on-one sessions with 1 struggling reader in the regular classroom for 15 min a day until that struggler made rapid reading progress. Teachers then moved on to another struggling reader until all 5 struggling readers in the class received the TRI during the year. Biweekly webcam coaching sessions between the coach and teacher allowed the coach to see and hear the teacher as she instructed a struggling reader in a TRI session, and the teacher and child could see and hear the coach. In this way the classroom teacher was able to receive real-time feedback from the coach. Three-level hierarchical linear models suggested that struggling readers in the intervention schools significantly outperformed the struggling readers in the control schools, with effect sizes from 0.36 to 0.63 on 4 individualized achievement tests. Results suggested that struggling readers were gaining at the same rate as the non-struggling readers, but they were not catching up with their non-struggling peers.

This research is part of a larger, IES-funded study titled: "Measuring the Efficacy and Student Achievement of Research-based Instructional Materials in High School Multidisciplinary Science" (Award # R305K060142). The larger study seeks to use a cluster-randomized trial design, with schools as the unit of assignment, to make causal inferences about the effect of treatment on both students and teachers. The research described in this report addresses the following research question associated with path "a" in Figure 1: (1) What is the mean difference in teacher outcome (i.e., instruction) across the treatment groups? (a) What is the effect size (practical significance)? (b) Is the difference statistically significant at the alpha = 0.05 level?; and (2) If practically or statistically significant differences in instruction exist across treatment groups, to what extent can the differences be attributed to the treatment (instructional materials and PD)? The research takes place in both suburban and rural high schools in the state of Washington. In particular, the suburban schools are clustered near Seattle/Tacoma and the rural schools are clustered near Yakima. The data from this analysis suggest that the PD treatment was more effective in fostering reform-oriented science instruction, on average, than was the extant PD experienced by the business-as-usual comparison group. This difference was both statistically and practically significant. Applying this result to the authors' hypothesis of mediation, they now have confidence that one of the causal paths (path a) that are necessary to argue mediation is trustworthy. Further study of path b is necessary to understand whether instruction is serving as a mediator of the treatment effect. That said, there is evidence in the literature suggesting that the possibility of a significant b path is quite real. For example, Hedges and Hedberg (2007) found that in school-level interventions, a considerable amount of the variance in outcomes was attributable to teacher and /or classroom effects. Threats to internal validity that are noteworthy include limitations in the authors' confidence that the post-intervention differences in RTOP scores were not pre-existing (i.e., not attributable to the treatment). Unfortunately, they did not have a baseline RTOP measure that could have served as a covariate in the main effect analysis of treatment. Use of such a covariate would have likely provided a more precise estimate of the treatment effect. Further, because the comparison group received business-as-usual PD, this experience was highly variable across teachers. The research team has only cursory knowledge of the nature and duration of extant PD experienced by the comparison group. As such, there is limited clarity in the PD experiences to which the treatment is being compared. In the context of an efficacy trial, external validity (i.e., generalizability) of findings is not paramount. However, it should be noted again that the authors' sampling approach was not random. Therefore, they are cautious not to suggest that their treatment effect estimates would generalize far beyond their sample of rural and suburban schools in Washington state. (Contains 1 figure and 6 tables.)

This research is part of a larger, IES-funded study titled: "Measuring the Efficacy and Student Achievement of Research-based Instructional Materials in High School Multidisciplinary Science" (Award # R305K060142). The larger study seeks to use a cluster-randomized trial design, with schools as the unit of assignment, to make causal inferences about the effect of treatment on both students and teachers. The research described in this report addresses the following research question associated with path "a" in Figure 1: (1) What is the mean difference in teacher outcome (i.e., instruction) across the treatment groups? (a) What is the effect size (practical significance)? (b) Is the difference statistically significant at the alpha = 0.05 level?; and (2) If practically or statistically significant differences in instruction exist across treatment groups, to what extent can the differences be attributed to the treatment (instructional materials and PD)? The research takes place in both suburban and rural high schools in the state of Washington. In particular, the suburban schools are clustered near Seattle/Tacoma and the rural schools are clustered near Yakima. The data from this analysis suggest that the PD treatment was more effective in fostering reform-oriented science instruction, on average, than was the extant PD experienced by the business-as-usual comparison group. This difference was both statistically and practically significant. Applying this result to the authors' hypothesis of mediation, they now have confidence that one of the causal paths (path a) that are necessary to argue mediation is trustworthy. Further study of path b is necessary to understand whether instruction is serving as a mediator of the treatment effect. That said, there is evidence in the literature suggesting that the possibility of a significant b path is quite real. For example, Hedges and Hedberg (2007) found that in school-level interventions, a considerable amount of the variance in outcomes was attributable to teacher and /or classroom effects. Threats to internal validity that are noteworthy include limitations in the authors' confidence that the post-intervention differences in RTOP scores were not pre-existing (i.e., not attributable to the treatment). Unfortunately, they did not have a baseline RTOP measure that could have served as a covariate in the main effect analysis of treatment. Use of such a covariate would have likely provided a more precise estimate of the treatment effect. Further, because the comparison group received business-as-usual PD, this experience was highly variable across teachers. The research team has only cursory knowledge of the nature and duration of extant PD experienced by the comparison group. As such, there is limited clarity in the PD experiences to which the treatment is being compared. In the context of an efficacy trial, external validity (i.e., generalizability) of findings is not paramount. However, it should be noted again that the authors' sampling approach was not random. Therefore, they are cautious not to suggest that their treatment effect estimates would generalize far beyond their sample of rural and suburban schools in Washington state. (Contains 1 figure and 6 tables.)

Student achievement in mathematics has been a focal concern in the United States for many years. The National Research Council's 2001 report and the recent report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) both called attention to student achievement in mathematics, and both called for all students to learn algebra by the end of eighth grade. Reports have argued, further, that achieving this goal requires that students first successfully learn several topics in rational numbers--fractions, decimals, ratio, rate, proportion, and percent. These topics are typically covered in grades 4 through 7, yet many students continue to struggle with them beyond the seventh grade. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel wrote that--difficulty with fractions (including decimals and percent) is pervasive and is a major obstacle to further progress in mathematics, including algebra. The panel also specified that by the end of seventh grade, students should be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio, and rate, and extend this work to proportionality. The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE)--within the Institute of Education Sciences--initiated the Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Impact Study to test the impact of a professional development (PD) program for teachers that was designed to address the problem of low student achievement in topics in rational numbers. The study focuses on seventh grade, the culminating year for teaching those topics and has three central research questions: (1) What impact did the PD program provided in this study have on teacher knowledge of rational number topics? (2) What impact did the PD program provided in this study have on teacher instructional practices? and (3) What impact did the PD program provided in this study have on student achievement in rational number topics? The study produced the following results: (1) The study's PD program was implemented as intended; (2) The PD program did not produce a statistically significant impact on teacher knowledge of rational numbers (effect size = 0.19, p-value = 0.15); (3) The PD program had a statistically significant impact on the frequency with which teachers engaged in activities that elicited student thinking, one of the three measures of instructional practice used in the study (effect size = 0.48); and (4) The PD program did not produce a statistically significant impact on student achievement (effect size = 0.04, p-value = 0.37). This report presents the study's findings after 1 year of implementing the PD in the treatment schools. A subsequent report will present findings after 2 years of implementing the PD. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the study. Chapter 2 describes the study design and its realization, including a description of the sample and tests of baseline equivalence of the treatment and control groups on observed characteristics. Chapter 3 describes the design and implementation of the PD program and the extent of service contrast between the treatment and control groups. Chapter 4 addresses the impact of the PD program on teacher knowledge, instructional practice, and student mathematics achievement. Chapter 5 provides several nonexperimental analyses that explore additional questions related to the impact findings. Appended are: (1) Data Collection; (2) Details of the Study Samples and Analytic Approaches; (3) Supplemental Information on the Design and Implementation of the PD Program; (4) Supporting Tables and Figures for Impact Analyses; and (5) Exploratory Analyses: Approaches and Additional Results. (Contains 9 exhibits, 9 figures, and 90 tables.)

As an increasing number of studies document the link between the development of student academic and social behavior, there is a growing need to create and evaluate interventions that address both types of skill development in school contexts. It is of particular importance to focus on interventions that improve the learning environment to maximize student success. The Good Behavior Game (TGBG) is an example of a research-based intervention that can be easily modified and implemented in conjunction with academic interventions to maximize effectiveness of student supports. The present study focused on the development and implementation of a modified version of TGBG implemented during the delivery of a secondary level early literacy intervention for students at-risk for reading difficulties. Specifically, this study examined whether instructional assistants' implementation of TGBG was functionally related to changes in student and instructor outcomes. The student outcomes assessed were (1) problem behavior, (2) academic engagement, and (3) pre-literacy skill development. The instructor outcomes assessed were provision of opportunities to respond to instruction, specific praise, and corrective statements for student social behavior. Data were also collected on fidelity of implementation, contextual fit, and social validity of TGBG. A concurrent multiple baseline design across five instructional reading groups was used to evaluate effects of TGBG. Results indicated that TGBG was functionally related to reductions in student problem behavior. In addition, a functional relation was established between implementation of TGBG and increases in instructor provision of specific praise statements and decreases in provision of corrective statements. Academic engagement and provision of opportunities to respond remained high and stable throughout the study. Pre-literacy trajectories did not appear to be functionally related to TGBG implementation; however, this may have been due to the short timeframe of the study. Instructional assistants implementing TGBG as well as students participating in TGBG rated it positively. Conceptual, practical, and future research implications are discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The purpose of this study was to examine the differential effects of 2 versions of the Good Behavior Game (Barrish, Saunders, & Wolf, 1969), allocating teacher attention to rule violations (GBG-response cost) and to rule following (GBG-reinforcement), on student and teacher behavior. The participants were 6 kindergarten students who were nominated as the 3 most disruptive students in each classroom. The study was conducted using single-case A/B/A/C/B/C reversal design with each teacher randomly assigned to either GBG-response cost or GBG-reinforcement condition for implementation in the first B phase. Results indicated that both versions were effective at reducing rule violations and that GBG-reinforcement consistently resulted in either comparable or lower levels of rule violations across classrooms and students. In addition, GBG-reinforcement was preferred by the teachers as a better fit to their classrooms. The implications of the findings to teachers and school psychologists in classroom settings are discussed. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

In 2007, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began implementing a schoolwide reform called the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) using funds from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) and private foundations. Under the TAP model, teachers can earn extra pay and responsibilities through promotion to mentor or master teacher as well as annual performance bonuses based on a combination of their value added to student achievement and observed performance in the classroom. The idea behind the program is that performance incentives, combined with tools for teachers to track performance and improve instruction, should help schools attract and retain talented teachers and help all teachers produce greater student achievement. This report provides evidence on the impacts of TAP during the 2008-2009 school year, the second year of the program's rollout in CPS. Appended are: (1) Propensity Score Matching; and (2) Longitudinal Analysis of Test Score Data. (Contains 18 tables, 7 figures and 14 footnotes.) [For the Year One Impact Report, see ED507502.]

Teacher residencies are surfacing as a promising model for teacher preparation. One such residency program--Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE)--seeks to raise student achievement in local high-needs schools by increasing the effectiveness and retention of both new and veteran educators. CREATE aims to achieve this by developing critically-conscious, compassionate, and skilled educators who are committed to teaching practices that prioritize racial justice and interrupt inequities. This quasi-experiment, funded by an Investing in Innovations (i3) grant, follows two staggered cohorts of study participants (CREATE and comparison teachers) for three years per cohort, starting with the first cohort in 2015-16. Confirmatory analyses found no statistically significant effects of CREATE on two Teacher Assessment on Performance Standards (TAPS) ratings for Instructional Strategies (p = 0.221) and Positive Learning Environment (p = 0.192), or on student achievement on ELA (p = 0.454), math (p = 0.569), and general achievement (p = 0.234). However, exploratory analyses (pre-registered) found very promising results showing undisrupted retention over a three-year time period (spanning graduation from Georgia State University's College of Education and Human Development, entering teaching, and retention into the second year of teaching) for the CREATE group, relative to the comparison group (p = 0.038). We also observed that the favorable impact is driven largely by higher continuous retention among Black educators in CREATE relative to those in the comparison group (p = 0.021). The percentages of teachers in CREATE, as averaged across the two study cohorts, who maintain an uninterrupted trajectory of graduating from GSU-CEHD, and taught in their first and second year are 94.8%, 87.4% and 84.6%, respectively. In the matched comparison group the corresponding values are 87.9%, 72.9%, and 68.0%. Among Black teachers in CREATE, the values are 98.6%, 96.3% and 95.5%, respectively. In the matched comparison group of Black teachers, the corresponding values are 85.7%, 68.5%, and 62.8%. These results are further corroborated by statistically significant or marginally statistically significant differential impacts favoring Black teachers on several potential mediators of impact: resilience, self-efficacy, and stress management and empathy related to teaching. The positive findings on retention, particularly for Black educators, are important given that 44% of teachers in Georgia leave the profession within the first five years, with evidence in the literature indicating that in the South, Black teachers experience higher turnover rates than non-Black teachers (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017). The authors discuss a number of factors that could have led to null impacts on confirmatory outcomes. The lack of variation in teacher performance ratings, which is a known issue in Georgia and in the literature at large (Weisberg et al, 2009; Kraft & Gilmour, 2017) could have contributed to the results for the TAPS ratings. Studies of teacher residency programs also suggest that impact on student achievement might not be present or detected in earlier years of teaching. Additionally, analyses of student achievement in this study were limited by small sample sizes of teachers in tested grades and subjects. The authors hope to address these limitations and to investigate the promising outcomes on retention, especially for Black educators, in current and future studies of CREATE, for which we have secured funding for programming and research through the eighth cohort. [For the appendices, see ED611803.]

Engaged in the evaluation of LDC tools since June 2011, UCLA's National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) is using multiple data sources and a quasi-experimental design to examine LDC implementation and impact in two cohorts of schools in two large, urban school districts. This report presents the results on implementation of LDC in the large urban school district on the West Coast during the third year of the intervention, and the impact of the program across multiple years. Findings from both participant surveys and analyses of student outcomes reveal positive results for the LDC intervention. Analysis of student outcomes provided evidence of the program's effectiveness and confirmation for participants' positive views. Quasi-experimental analyses demonstrated a statistically significant positive impact of LDC as practiced by middle school teachers with 2 years of program experience across two cohorts of schools and teachers. A statistically significant positive impact was also found for Cohort 2 middle schools after just one year of implementation. [For the 2017-2018 report, see ED600053.]

Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013. The new standards set off a chain reaction of standards adoption and implementation across states, districts, and schools, including steps taken toward transforming science professional learning, instruction, curriculum, and assessment. It was in this dynamic context that Empirical Education conducted an impact evaluation, as part of an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant, of WestEd's Making Sense of SCIENCE project, a teacher professional learning model aimed at raising students' science achievement through improving science instruction. Under this grant, WestEd and Empirical Education also partnered with Heller Research Associates (HRA) to conduct an implementation study and a scale-up study of Making Sense of SCIENCE. The impact evaluation, which is the focus of this report, was a two-year cluster-randomized control trial (RCT) that took place in California and Wisconsin across seven school districts and 66 elementary schools in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. The study randomized schools to either receive the Making Sense of SCIENCE professional learning or to the business-as-usual ("control") group, which received the professional learning (delayed-treatment) after the study ended. The study found that Making Sense of SCIENCE had a positive impact on teacher content knowledge (effect size = 0.56, p = 0.006) and a positive impact on a holistic scale of teacher pedagogical content knowledge (effect size = 0.41, p = 0.026). The study also yielded positive and significant impacts on the amount of time teachers spent on science instruction (effect size = 0.40, p = 0.015) and on the emphasis that teachers placed on NGSS-aligned instructional practices, with statistically significant effect sizes ranging from 0.40 to 0.49. This suggestive evidence that Making Sense of SCIENCE changes classroom science learning experiences in ways that align with expectations in NGSS, which is a hypothesized precursor to measuring impacts on student achievement, deserves notice. In regard to student science achievement, the study did not find statistically significant results for the full sample of students (effect size = 0.06, p = 0.494), or for the sample of students in the bottom third of incoming math and English Language Arts achievement, with effect sizes of 0.22 (p = 0.099) and 0.073 (p = 0.567), respectively. Notably, with the exception of one negative effect size, additional analyses on student achievement using different measures and samples yielded positive, but not statistically significant, effect sizes ranging from 0.02 to 0.12. Evaluators offer three potential contributors to the findings of limited impact on student science achievement. First, given the timing of the study in relation to the release of the NGSS in 2013, finding a suitable NGSS-aligned student science assessment was a challenge. Second, most study schools and districts had not yet adopted NGSS-aligned curricula and did not have access to NGSS-aligned curriculum resources. Third, the sample of teachers was unstable across the two years, with the percentage of teachers leaving the school congruous to the percentage observed at the national level. [For the appendices, see ED609254; for the research summary, see ED609256.]

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) was created to support teachers in implementing college and career readiness standards in order to teach literacy skills throughout the content areas. Teachers work collaboratively with coaches to further develop their expertise and design standards-driven, literacy-rich writing assignments within their existing curriculum across all content areas. This report presents the results on implementation of LDC in the New York City Department of Education during the third year of the intervention, and the impact of the program across multiple years. As of 2018-2019, participating schools included 13 from Cohort 1, which began implementation during the 2016-2017 school year, and 23 from Cohort 2, which commenced at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year. Our primary impact analyses, presented in this report for the first time, pool teachers from both cohorts to measure their impact after participating in LDC for 2 consecutive years (2017-2018 student outcomes for Cohort 1 and 2018-2019 student outcomes for Cohort 2). Teachers and administrators appreciated LDC and perceived positive impact on their practice and their students' learning. Quasi-experimental analyses tended to produce positive estimates for the impact of LDC on student English language arts (ELA) assessment scores, but the differences did not reach the level of statistical significance. [For the 2017-2018 evaluation report, see ED606884.]

Purpose: In January 2015, the Northwest Board of Cooperative Educational Services (NW BOCES) received a five-year Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to develop and implement the System for Educator Effectiveness Development (SEED) program--an innovative professional development (PD) system designed to provide geographically isolated educators an impactful tool to improve teacher effectiveness. The purpose of this report is to document the implementation and impact evaluation of the grant on educator and student outcomes. Methods: Twenty-one schools in rural areas, where obtaining PD can be a challenge, participated in SEED between 2015 and 2020. One school closed during the study period but the majority of its students transferred to other participating schools. Because SEED was a school-level intervention, the target population consisted of all principals, assistant principals, teachers, and students in the participating sites. Correlational designs were implemented to examine the relationships between teacher-level and school-level SEED participation and the outcomes of interest, such as (1) principal engagement in teacher professional growth, (2) teacher access to and use of evidence-based and up-to-date practices, (3) teacher implementation of practice learned from PD in the classroom. A quasi-experimental design (QED) using propensity score matching (PSM) method was employed to examine difference in student achievement outcomes between the SEED schools and the matched non-SEED schools. Results: Correlational findings suggest that teachers who participated in SEED reported better outcomes compared to teachers who did not participate in SEED. Schools with high level of SEED participation had better outcomes compared to schools with low level of SEED participation. Findings of QED PSM design revealed that SEED had a statistically significant positive effect on one outcome measure (minority students' English language acquisition, or ELA) and marginally significant positive effects on four outcome measures (all related to English language acquisition and math outcomes among racial/ethnic minority and free and reduced-lunch, or FRL, students). Implications: Evaluation findings provided some positive and promising pieces of evidence to support SEED efficacy. Implementation findings suggest that the program was largely implemented with fidelity; yet, there are opportunities for improvement. Future research may consider replicating the program design and identify strategies to increase teacher participation at school level. Additional Materials: The following are appended: (1) SEED Evaluation: Technical Report; (2) Assessment of Fidelity of Implementation; and (3) Baseline Equivalence and Impact Analysis Outputs and Results.

This randomized controlled trial examined effects of the MyTeachingPartner-Math/Science intervention on the quality and quantity of teachers' mathematics and science instruction, and children's mathematics and science outcomes in 140 pre-kindergarten classrooms. Teachers participated in the intervention for two years with consecutive cohorts of children. Results from Year 1 are considered experimental, however due to high levels of attrition, results from Year 2 are considered quasi-experimental. Across both years, intervention teachers exhibited higher quality and quantity of instruction. In Year 1, there were no significant effects of the intervention on children's outcomes. In Year 2, children in intervention classrooms made greater gains in teachers' ratings of mathematics and science skills and performed better on a spring assessment of science skills. These results have implications for designing and evaluating professional development aimed at supporting children's mathematics and science knowledge and skills.

The study examined the effect of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in instructional leadership roles, operationalized as mentors to novice teachers, on (a) classroom practices of mentored novice teachers in Grades K-12 and (b) student achievement of mentored teachers' students in Grades 4-8. The study compared outcomes between NBCT mentors and non-NBCT mentors. The study examined the effect of NBCT mentors after one academic year and was conducted in San Francisco Unified School District. Using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, we examined novice teachers' classroom practices on the domains of Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, Instructional Support, and across all three domains. The results did not reach statistical significance, but the effect sizes for Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and a global measure across all domains suggest meaningful differences between classroom practices of novice teachers mentored by NBCTs and non-NBCTs. These effect sizes were 0.28, 0.28, and 0.21 standard deviations, respectively. The effect size for the domain of Instructional Support was near zero at -0.06 standard deviations. Our sample size for the analysis of classroom practices did not have sufficient power to estimate differences at a statistically significant level. We examined student achievement using the state's standardized test scores in mathematics and English language arts. Our achievement measure includes either subject: That is, we did not estimate effects separately for mathematics and English language arts. The results suggest that students taught by teachers mentored by NBCTs had a higher level of achievement than students mentored by non-NBCTs. The difference was statistically significant at a p value of 0.05, and the effect size was meaningful at 0.18 standard deviations. Small sample sizes and low statistical power prevent us from making confident conclusions about the effect of NBCTs in instructional leadership roles on classroom practices of supported teachers and student achievement. However, the evidence is encouraging and warrants additional rigorous research on the impact of NBCTs as instructional leaders.

Empirical Education Inc. is the independent evaluator of SRI International's 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant called Redesigning Secondary Courses to Improve Academic Outcomes for Adolescents with Disabilities and Other Underperforming Adolescents. The goal of the grant is to develop "Enhanced Units" that combine research-based content enhancement routines, collaboration strategy, and technology components for secondary U.S. History and biology classes. This report presents findings of a randomized control trial (RCT) during the 2017-18 school year. The RCT measured the impact of "Enhanced Units" on higher order content skills (as measured through unit tests) in high school biology and U.S. History classes in three districts in Virginia and California. SRI, the Center for Applied Special Education Technology (CAST), and their research and practitioner partners developed "Enhanced Units" (EU) with the goal of integrating research-based content enhancement routines with technological enhancements to improve student content learning and higher order reasoning, especially for students with disabilities or other learning challenges. This study also documents the extent to which the core components of EU were implemented with fidelity. The authors provide descriptive results on classroom practices (as measured by teacher surveys) and contextual factors that support or hinder implementation (as described during teacher interviews). Future improvements to EU should focus on answering the question: "What is/are the best way(s) for teachers to present SIM routines to their students, particularly for students with learning challenges through SIM intervention?"

In contrast to prior federally mandated school reforms, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states more discretion in reforming their lowest performing schools, removes requirements to disrupt the status quo, and does not allocate substantial additional funds. Using a regression discontinuity design, we evaluate a state turnaround initiative aligned with ESSA requirements. We find the effect on student test score growth was not significant in year one and -0.13 in year two. Also in year two, we find that teachers in turnaround schools were 22.5 percentage points more likely to turn over. Teacher turnover appears to have been voluntary rather than the result of strategic staffing decisions.

This study assesses the implementation and impacts of the Teacher Potential Project (TPP), a program designed by EL Education and which includes an English language arts (ELA) standards-aligned curriculum and embedded professional development for teachers. The study uses a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design to assess the impacts of TPP on the instructional practice outcomes of ELA teachers in grades 3 through 8 and the ELA achievement outcomes of their students. The RCT includes 70 elementary and middle schools (35 treatment and 35 control) in 18 relatively high-need districts that were randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions within matched pairs of schools in three cohorts that began participating in the 2014-2015, 2015-2016, and 2016-2017 school years. Treatment schools engaged in TPP for one year while control schools continued with business as usual. The study also uses a two-year quasi-experimental design (QED) study to assess the impact of extending implementation of TPP to a second year on teacher instructional practice and student ELA achievement outcomes. EL Education recruited 22 of the study schools (10 treatment and 12 control) in five districts in one cohort to participate in a second year of the study. The study team collected a variety of data for the evaluation of TPP, including teacher surveys and classroom observations administered in fall and spring each year and student administrative records. Impacts of TPP on ELA teacher instructional practices and student ELA achievement were estimated using multivariate regression methods. The implementation evaluation found that the TPP ELA curriculum was implemented in all schools, and that there was generally high school-level implementation fidelity of the TPP professional development components in the first and second years of TPP among the novice ELA teachers. The impact evaluation found positive impacts of TPP on ELA teachers' overall instructional practices after one year compared to teachers who used their district-provided curriculum and participated in their district's professional development supports. After two years of teacher participation, impacts on their students' ELA achievement were roughly equivalent to 1.4 months of typical student improvement, or moving an average student scoring at the 50th percentile to the 54th percentile. The findings be useful to districts and policymakers aiming to support teachers and students in the context of rigorous state standards such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The study of TPP makes several important contributions to the literature evaluating paired curriculum and PD programs: it uses rigorous group designs, evaluates the impact of one and two years of program implementation, and examines broad outcomes on both teacher instructional practice and student ELA achievement. [This report was submitted by Mathematica to EL Education.]

In 2013, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards received a 5-year Investing in Innovation Fund Development grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop, implement, and study Accomplished Teaching, Learning, and Schools (ATLAS). ATLAS is an online case library that contains examples of "accomplished teaching" practice delivered by National Board Certified Teachers. A purpose of the grant activities was to expose preservice and early career teachers to ATLAS content, which was hypothesized to affect their teaching practice and the achievements of their students. This final report summarizes research on the first 2 years of the program's implementation at scale (during the grant's fourth and fifth years), and the effects of ATLAS use on the outcomes of preservice and early career teachers and on the mathematics and science achievements of students in Grades 3-6. The study team determined that ATLAS was implemented with fidelity at the institution of higher education and local education agency levels during the second study year but not the first study year. Regarding the effects of ATLAS use on the outcomes of preservice teachers, early career teachers, and students, the study did not identify any observable differences between ATLAS users and non-ATLAS users or their students. [This report was funded by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) through a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation Fund grant to NBPTS.]

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) was created to support teachers in implementing college and career readiness standards in order to teach literacy skills throughout the content areas. Teachers work collaboratively with coaches to further develop their expertise and design standards-driven, literacy-rich writing assignments within their existing curriculum across all content areas. The 2016-2017 school year was the first year of implementation, following a pilot year during which the implementation plan, instruments, data collection processes, and analytical methodologies were refined. Participants across all groups reported positive attitudes toward LDC and perceive a positive impact on student outcomes. Analysis of module artifacts suggest that teachers at the elementary school level were moderately successful in the backwards design process, particularly in developing high-quality writing tasks for students. As an ongoing multiyear intervention, the LDC implementation will continue to evolve year to year as participants provide feedback and LDC program managers make refinements. Thus, we anticipate that further significant changes to the course material and the delivery system that are already in progress for Year 2 will likely result in continued and possibly increased positive feedback. [Funding for this work was provided by the Literacy Design Collaborative.]

The Good Behaviour Game (GBG) is a universal behaviour management intervention that aims to to improve pupil behaviour with the following core elements: classroom rules, team membership, monitoring of behaviour, and positive reinforcement (rewards). While it is primarily used with children in primary schools, it can also be implemented in early years and secondary education settings. Over the course of implementation, it is intended that there is a natural progression in terms of the types of rewards given (from tangible rewards such as stickers to more abstract rewards such as free time), how long the game is played for (from 10 minutes to a whole lesson), at what frequency (from three times a week to every day), and when rewards are given (at the end of the game, the end of the day, and the end of the week). A randomised controlled trial design was used in which 77 schools were randomly allocated to implement the GBG for two years (38 schools) or continue their normal practices (39 schools). The target cohort was pupils in Year 3 (aged 7-8) in the first year of implementation (N=3084). The project was designed as an efficacy trial. Alongside the assessment of outcomes, the evaluators undertook a comprehensive mixed-methods implementation and process evaluation involving observations, interviews and focus groups. Findings showed: (1) no evidence that the GBG improves pupils' reading; (2) no evidence that the GBG improves pupils' behaviour (specifically, concentration problems, disruptive behaviour, and pro-social behaviour); (3) implementation was variable and in particular, the frequency and duration with which the GBG was played did not reach the levels expected by the developer; (4) higher levels of pupil engagement with the game were associated with improved reading, concentration, and disruptive behaviour scores at follow-up; and (5) tentative evidence that boys identified as at-risk of developing conduct problems at the beginning of the project benefitted from the GBG.

The present study is a wait-list controlled, randomized study investigating a teacher coaching approach that emphasizes formative assessment and visual performance feedback to enhance elementary school teachers' classroom practices. The coaching model targeted instructional and behavioral management practices as measured by the Classroom Strategies Assessment System (CSAS) Observer and Teacher Forms. The sample included 89 general education teachers, stratified by grade level, and randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions: (a) immediate coaching, or (b) waitlist control. Results indicated that, relative to the waitlist control, teachers in immediate coaching demonstrated significantly greater improvements in observations of behavior management strategy use but not for observations of instructional strategy use. Observer- and teacher-completed ratings of behavioral management strategy use at postassessment were significantly improved by both raters; ratings of instructional strategy use were significantly improved for teacher but not observer ratings. A brief coaching intervention improved teachers' use of observed behavior management strategies and self-reported use of behavior management and instructional strategies.

The goal of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-component consultation package in improving teachers' classroom management skills, particularly among teachers with lower baseline levels of knowledge, skills, and intervention-supportive beliefs. Participants were 58 elementary school teachers (93% female; 50% Non-Hispanic White) who received up to eight biweekly consultation sessions focused on general classroom management strategies and implementation of a daily report card (DRC) intervention with one target student with or at-risk for ADHD. Teachers were randomly assigned to either a comparison consultation condition designed to mirror current best practices (Frank & Kratochwill, 2014; Noell & Gansle, 2014) or a multi-component condition designed to simultaneously address teacher knowledge, skills, and beliefs as possible barriers to implementation of classroom interventions. Teachers in both conditions showed significant improvements in labeled praise, appropriate response to student rule violations, and general competence in classroom management. In support of the hypotheses, teachers with lower baseline levels of knowledge, skills, and intervention-supportive beliefs demonstrated more improvement in key outcomes in response to multi-component consultation, as compared to the comparison consultation (Cohen's "d" ranged from 0.33 to 1.12). Implications for research and practice in school consultation are discussed. [This paper was published in "School Mental Health" v9 p218-234 2017.]

Understanding teachers' stress is of critical importance to address the challenges in today's educational climate. Growing numbers of teachers are reporting high levels of occupational stress, and high levels of teacher turnover are having a negative impact on education quality. Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE for Teachers) is a mindfulness-based professional development program designed to promote teachers' social and emotional competence and improve the quality of classroom interactions. The efficacy of the program was assessed using a cluster randomized trial design involving 36 urban elementary schools and 224 teachers. The CARE for Teachers program involved 30 hr of in-person training in addition to intersession phone coaching. At both pre- and postintervention, teachers completed self-report measures and assessments of their participating students. Teachers' classrooms were observed and coded using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Analyses showed that CARE for Teachers had statistically significant direct positive effects on adaptive emotion regulation, mindfulness, psychological distress, and time urgency. CARE for Teachers also had a statistically significant positive effect on the emotional support domain of the CLASS. The present findings indicate that CARE for Teachers is an effective professional development both for promoting teachers' social and emotional competence and increasing the quality of their classroom interactions.

In 2011, the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) received an Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant through the U.S. Department of Education. UAF applied for the grant to expand the predominantly rural-serving Alaska Statewide Mentor Project (ASMP) to urban settings. ASMP is a professional development initiative that supplies fully released, highly trained mentors to early career teachers (ECTs). UAF's i3 grant, The Urban Growth Opportunity (UGO), included five districts: Anchorage, Fairbanks North Star Borough, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, and Sitka. This is the final report for the grant conducted over four years (2011 2012 to 2014 2015). The research team randomly assigned 556 ECTs to treatment (UGO) and business as usual (BAU) groups. UGO ECTs received an ASMP mentor for two years; BAU ECTs received their districts' business as usual support that varied by district and included content coaches without mentoring support and non-ASMP instructional mentoring support. Researchers conducted impact, implementation, and intervention studies. The impact study included seven outcomes: teacher retention; teacher instructional practice as measured by the three Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support); and student achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics as measured by the state assessment. While UGO ECTs were retained as teachers in Alaska public schools at higher rates than BAU ECTs, the difference was not statistically significant. There were no statistically significant differences between UGO and BAU ECTs on instructional practices as measured by CLASS®. Finally, student achievement was generally higher for students of UGO ECTs, but differences in achievement were statistically significant only for some student groups: primary reading students and secondary math students who were White, Hispanic, Alaskan Native, or two or more races. Results from the implementation study, conducted over three of the four years of implementation, found ASMP implemented UGO with fidelity across all components: mentor recruitment and assignment, mentor participation in professional development, mentor interaction with their ECTs, and mentors' use of formative assessment tools. Results from the intervention study identified two types of mentor-mentee dyads: Gliders and Sliders, with gliders engaging in longer conversations, focused more explicitly on instruction and students, responding to each other more often, and engaging as peers more frequently than the slider dyads.

Data-based instructional programs have proliferated in American schools despite limited evidence of their effectiveness in improving educator practice and raising student achievement. We report results from a two-year school-randomized evaluation of the Achievement Network (ANet), a program providing schools with standards-aligned interim assessments and intensive supports for instructional data use. Survey data show that ANet increased teacher satisfaction with the timeliness and clarity of the data they receive and available supports for instructional data-use and caused them to review and use interim assessment data more often. ANet did not, however, affect their confidence in data use or how frequently they differentiated instruction. Student impact estimates show no overall effect on student achievement in English language arts or mathematics. Despite the lack program effects on student achievement, we find that achievement is positively correlated with our survey-based measures of teacher perceptions and practices around instructional data use. Exploratory analyses suggest that the success of ANet in improving teacher practice and student achievement varies with the pre-existing capacity of schools to engage in data-based instruction. Schools rated by program staff as having a high level of readiness to implement the intervention prior to random assignment experienced positive impacts on student achievement, while those rated as a having a low level of readiness experienced negative impacts. The following are appended: (1) School Screener Scoring Rubric; (2) Year 2 School Leader and Teacher Survey Scale Items; and (3) School Leader and Teacher Survey Impact Tables.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the Florida Master Teacher Initiative (FMTI)--an i3-funded early learning program aimed at improving the quality of teaching and student outcomes in grades PreK through third grade in high need schools. The FMTI schools participated in four program components: (1) a job-embedded graduate degree program with an early childhood specialization, (2) a Teacher Fellows program through which teachers engage in yearlong inquiry projects around their practice, (3) a Principal Fellows program during which principals work together to strengthen their facilitative leadership skills, and (4) Summer Leadership Institutes to review data and engage in action planning. The impact evaluation had two primary goals: (1) to assess the school-level impact of FMTI on teachers and students; and (2) to assess the impact of FMTI on teachers enrolled in the job-embedded early childhood graduate degree program and their students. To achieve the first goal, the evaluation used a cluster random assignment design, in which 40 Miami-Dade County Title I public elementary schools were randomly assigned to the FMTI program or a status-quo control condition. To achieve the second goal, the evaluation used an embedded quasi-experimental design using propensity score matching and difference-in-differences approaches. SRI International administered schoolwide surveys at baseline and in the final year of the grant in both intervention and control schools; conducted classroom observations of job-embedded graduate program teachers and a matched comparison group using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) early in the teachers' first year of the graduate program and a follow-up observation occurred after or near the end of the program, with program teachers and sample of comparison teachers; and gathered student reading and math achievement data on children in kindergarten through fifth grade who were at the 40 study schools at the time of random assignment for a total of more than 10,000 students in the FMTI schools and a similar number of students in the control schools. The study did not find school-level impacts on student achievement or on the majority of outcomes measured through the teacher survey. Analysis of the impact of the job-embedded graduate degree program found a positive difference of 1.7 points for participating teachers in the instructional quality domain of the CLASS compared to matched comparison teachers. The evaluation also found positive and statistically significant results for the graduate program teachers compared to comparison teachers on the teacher survey in the areas of engagement in leadership activities, engagement in governance activities, engagement in outreach activities, self-reported early childhood knowledge, and self-reported general instructional knowledge. No significant differences in math or reading achievement were found for students of the graduate program teachers compared to students of a matched sample of teachers in control schools. The implementation of the FMTI program was not sufficiently robust to definitively determine its effectiveness. FMTI treatment schools that achieved medium or high fidelity of implementation across the three years experienced more positive outcomes. The evaluation has illuminated lessons about how to effectively provide job-embedded professional development to support teacher quality improvement. The following are appended: (1) Methods; (2) Implementation Fidelity; and (3) Impact Estimates.

This study uses a randomized design to assess the impact of the Balanced Leadership program on principal leadership, instructional climate, principal efficacy, staff turnover, and student achievement in a sample of rural northern Michigan schools. Participating principals report feeling more efficacious, using more effective leadership practices, and having a better instructional climate than control group principals. However, teacher reports indicate that the instructional climate of the schools did not change. Furthermore, we find no impact of the program on student achievement. There was an impact of the program on staff turnover, with principals and teachers in treatment schools significantly more likely to remain in the same school over the 3 years of the study than staff in control schools.

The Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework was developed by WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) two decades ago to help teachers provide the literacy support students need to be successful readers in the content areas. It has since reached over 100,000 teachers in schools across the country, at the middle school, high school, and college levels. The Reading Apprenticeship framework focuses on four interacting dimensions of classroom learning culture: Social, Personal, Cognitive, and Knowledge-Building. These four dimensions are woven into subject-area teaching through metacognitive conversation--conversations about the thinking processes students and teachers engage in as they read. The context in which this all takes place is extensive reading--increased in-class opportunities for students to practice reading complex academic texts in more skillful ways. Teachers also work with students on explicit comprehension strategy instruction, vocabulary and academic language development techniques, text-based discussion, and writing. Reading Apprenticeship is designed to help teachers create classroom cultures in which students feel safe to share reading processes, problems, and solutions. In 2010, WestEd received a "Validation" grant from the Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) competition to scale-up and conduct a randomized controlled trial of the intervention through a project called Reading Apprenticeship Improving Secondary Success (RAISE). RAISE took place in California, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Indiana and worked with nearly 2,000 teachers who served approximately 630,000 students during the grant period. This report presents findings from the randomized controlled trial conducted in two of those states: California and Pennsylvania. The report presents key implementation and impact findings from the i3 impact evaluation of the RAISE project. Most of the findings in this report are from the sample of students and data collected during teachers' second year in the study, after treatment teachers had received the full "dose" of professional development delivered over 12 months and could therefore be expected to fully implement Reading Apprenticeship. Data sources for this report include principal, teacher, and student surveys; professional development observations and attendance records; school district student records; and an assessment of students' literacy skills. Overall, the study's findings demonstrate the potential of RAISE to address the paucity of content-specific reading instruction in U.S. secondary schools--especially in science, where the need may be greatest. Appended are the following: (1) Impact Estimation Model; (2) Student Survey Constructs; (3) Teacher Survey Constructs; (4) Analytic Sample Baseline Equivalence; (5) Student Literacy Assessment; (6) Sample Attrition; (7) Additional Impact Analyses for Teacher Mediating Outcomes; (8) Additional Impact Analyses for Student Mediating Outcomes; (9) Additional Impact Analyses for Student Literacy; (10) Fidelity of Implementation Summary; and (11) Context for Program Implementation.

The Schools to Watch: School Transformation Network Project is a whole school reform model designed to improve the educational practices, experiences, and outcomes of low-performing middle-grades schools. Developed by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, the four-year project was funded in 2010 by a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of the project on intermediate outcomes such as culture, collaboration, and instructional practices as well as the long term outcome of student achievement. The study employed a quasi-experimental design where two student cohorts were tracked over four years at 34 schools (17 intervention and 17 comparison) in three states. The intervention schools were comprised of persistently low-performing middle-grades schools serving high need students. Comparison schools were selected using key demographics to match to intervention schools. Several process and measurement tools for assessing implementation and intermediate outcomes were used, including surveys, the STW criteria rating rubric, coach's logs, and focus groups. The long term outcome data for the impact study included student English and math achievement scores on annual standardized state assessments. To examine achievement scores between intervention and comparison students, a series of 2-level models (students within schools) were run to assess 8th grade achievement (i.e., after students received all three years of the intervention). Results showed that i3 STW Project schools improved their culture and climate, collaboration practices, leadership practices, STW criteria implementation, and classroom instructional practices. There was no overall intervention effect on either English or math student achievement, however, significant results were found for the highest implemented schools, those project schools that achieved STW designation during the project. The results of the study provide unique insight into the reform process for i3 STW Project schools as well as other middle-grades schools that are struggling to improve. The multiple supports provided by the project combined with the guiding vision of the STW criteria and rubric supported these high need schools to improve contextual factors (i.e., culture, collaboration, leadership, teaching and learning practices), and for a subsample of schools, student achievement. Districts and schools embarking on reform need to focus on collaborative leadership, have a guiding vision, use a continuous improvement model for instructional improvements, and value networking with other schools to gain knowledge. Two appendices are included: (1) Psychometric Properties of the Self-Study Survey Constructs; and (2) Fidelity Matrix for National Forum's STW School Transformation Network Project.

In 2011 Baltimore City Schools submitted a successful proposal for an Investing in Innovations (i3) grant to offer a three year (2012-2014) summer program designed to expose rising sixth through eighth grade students to VEX robotics. The i3-funded Middle School Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Summer Learning Program was part of a larger Baltimore City STEM summer learning program entitled "Create the Solution" in 2012 and "22nd Century Pioneers" in 2013 and 2014. The five-week summer program offered in 2012, 2013, and 2014 consisted of a half-day of instruction in mathematics and science and a half-day of enrichment activities. The robotics workshop taught students the fundamentals of building robots and provided time for teams to build their own robots and participate in competitions. The larger program offered different enrichment activities such as sports or arts. This report addresses research questions regarding the program's: (1) implementation fidelity; (2) performance goals; (3) impact on student attendance and mathematics achievement outcomes; (4) impact on student aspirations for college, studying STEM subjects in college, and pursuing STEM careers; and (5) impact on measures of teacher effectiveness. The following includes a summary for each: (1) Implementation Fidelity: Instruction in mathematics and robotics was implemented with fidelity all three program years. Implementation fidelity was lower for the professional development in robotics and mathematics components of the program because teacher attendance rates did not meet the thresholds set by City Schools; (2) Enrollment Goals: Most program enrollment goals were not met. Enrollment in the i3-funded program was 193 students in 2012 (goal 400), 384 in 2013 (goal 500), and 386 in 2014 (goal 600). The program sought to enroll 80% low-performing students in mathematics each year, but fell significantly short of this goal despite the district's efforts to reach out to these students. In addition, the program goal of enrolling at least 50% female participants was not met. The program also sought to have at least 80% of students attend at least 70% of the time (17 of the 24 program days), but only 55% of students attended at that rate. The program did meet its goals for recruiting minority (at least 95%) and high poverty students (at least 80%) each year; (3) Program Impacts on Attendance: Found a significant program effect on attendance in the year following the 2012 program. Program students had average attendance rates of 1.4 percentage points higher than the comparison group the year following the program (97.0% vs. 95.6%). An even larger significant program effect for low-achieving students' attendance was found in the year following the 2012 program (96.4% vs. 93.8%). The 2013 program students had slightly but not significantly higher attendance rates than their matched comparison students in the year following the program. The authors also also examined whether there was still a program effect on attendance a year later (2013-14) for the Summer 2012 participants. Program participants had average attendance rates of 1.5 percentage points higher than comparison students (95.2% vs. 93.7%). Among the low-achieving students the attendance difference was 2.4 percentage points (93.6% for program students vs. 91.2% for comparison students). These effects were not statistically significant; (4) Program Impacts on Mathematics Achievement: There were no program effects on mathematics achievement for either the 2012 or 2013 programs; (5) Program Impacts on Student Aspirations: There was no evidence from student survey data that the robotics program had a positive effect on student aspirations to attend college, study STEM subjects in college, or pursue a STEM career for either the 2013 or 2014 programs; and (6) Program Impacts on Teacher Effectiveness: Analyses based on mean instructional effectiveness scores from Spring 2013 and Fall 2013 on the nine components of the district's teacher evaluation tool examined whether teachers who received the summer professional development in 2013 made gains in instructional effectiveness. The difference between program teachers' effectiveness scores before and after the professional development was not statistically significant. Data were not available to examine differences between program teachers and a comparable group of teachers who did not receive the summer professional development. The following are appended: (1) Implementation Fidelity; (2) Performance Goals; and (3) Methodology.

We conducted a randomized field trial to test an academic vocabulary intervention designed to bolster the language and literacy skills of linguistically diverse sixth-grade students (N = 2,082; n = 1,469 from a home where English is not the primary language), many demonstrating low achievement, enrolled in 14 urban middle schools. The 20-week classroom-based intervention improved students' vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness skills, and comprehension of expository texts that included academic words taught, as well as their performance on a standardized measure of written language skills. The effects were generally larger for students whose primary home language is not English and for those students who began the intervention with underdeveloped vocabulary knowledge.

TAP™: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement was launched in 1999 as a comprehensive educator effectiveness model to offer career advancement and leadership opportunities for educators, a fair and transparent evaluation process linked to job-embedded professional development and performance-based compensation, which culminate in improved instructional practices and student achievement. This study illustrates the impact of the TAP System in 66 Louisiana schools. These are primarily high-need schools, with average free/reduced price lunch eligibility of 86%, impacting more than 32,000 students each year. The authors report evidence of a positive effect of the TAP System on student achievement using two complementary analysis strategies: (1) They found a significant positive effect of TAP on 2012-13 K-8 Assessment Index scores, controlling for previous achievement, percentage of students receiving free or reduced price lunch, school configuration, school size (number of students), and percentage of English language learners. The 66 TAP schools scored 3.7 points higher on average than non-TAP schools statewide; and (2) They also found that the TAP schools had significantly greater 2012-13 Assessment Index scores than a group of matched control schools. The TAP schools scored 5.5 points higher on average than their matched controls.

This study explored the effects of a web-based decision support system ("Tutorial") for writing standards-based Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). A total of 35 teachers and 154 students participated across two academic years. Participants were assigned to one of three intervention groups based on level of "Tutorial" access: Full, Partial, or Comparison. Direct effects of the intervention on procedural and substantive elements of IEPs revealed that, although all groups had initial IEPs of similar quality, the Full Intervention group's post-"Tutorial" IEPs had a significantly higher proportion of substantive items rated as adequate than did the IEPs of other groups. The intervention's indirect effects were examined using student scores on the State Reading Assessment. The Full Intervention group demonstrated a higher rate of reading score gain than the other two groups during the academic year in which the IEP prepared with access to the "Tutorial" was implemented. Implications for educational practices and future research directions are discussed.

One dimension of language proficiency considered important for reading and writing academic texts is morphological awareness--the understanding of how complex words are formed from meaningful smaller units (i.e., affixes, roots) that contribute to words' meanings and functions. This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effects of instruction on syntactic and relational aspects of morphological awareness for language minority (LM) learners (n = 349) and native English speakers (n = 133) in grade 6. In 7 urban middle schools, teachers implementing an 18-week multicomponential academic language intervention were matched to teachers providing the standard curriculum to students with similar achievement and demographics. Multilevel modeling indicated statistically significant, practically meaningful effects on morphological awareness. For relational aspects, LM learners and their peers demonstrated similar gains. For syntactic aspects, LM learners demonstrated greater gains than their peers. Findings suggest the potential benefits of incorporating morphology into academic language instruction, particularly for LM learners. (Contains 6 tables and 6 notes.)

This study reports Year 1 findings from a multisite cluster randomized controlled trial of a cognitive strategies approach to teaching text-based analytical writing for mainstreamed Latino English language learners (ELLs) in 9 middle schools and 6 high schools. There were 103 English teachers stratified by school and grade and then randomly assigned to the Pathway Project professional development intervention or control group. The Pathway Project trains teachers to use a pretest on-demand writing assessment to improve text-based analytical writing instruction for mainstreamed Latino ELLs who are able to participate in regular English classes. The intervention draws on well-documented instructional frameworks for teaching mainstreamed ELLs. Such frameworks emphasize the merits of a cognitive strategies approach that supports these learners' English language development. Pathway teachers participated in 46 hrs of training and learned how to apply cognitive strategies by using an on-demand writing assessment to help students understand, interpret, and write analytical essays about literature. Multilevel models revealed significant effects on an on-demand writing assessment (d = 0.35) and the California Standards Test in English language arts (d = 0.07). (Contains 1 figure, 7 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Financial incentives for teachers to increase student performance is an increasingly popular education policy around the world. This paper describes a school-based randomized trial in over two-hundred New York City public schools designed to better understand the impact of teacher incentives on student achievement. I find no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation, nor do I find any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior. If anything, teacher incentives may decrease student achievement, especially in larger schools. The paper concludes with a speculative discussion of theories that may explain these stark results.

The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of a Tier 2 standard protocol supplemental intervention designed simultaneously to develop root word vocabulary and reinforce decoding skills being taught to all students in the core beginning reading program with kindergarten Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs). Participating students were drawn from six public elementary schools in the Midwest. Within classrooms, students were randomly assigned to either the supplemental intervention (treatment) or the specified control condition (i.e., used to control for instructional time and consistency). All instruction in both conditions was delivered by paraeducator tutors and occurred in small groups for approximately 20 min a day, 5 days a week, for 20 weeks (October to April). At posttest, treatment students (n = 93) in the experimental condition significantly outperformed controls (n = 92) on a proximal (i.e., linked directly with the instructional focus of the intervention) measure of root word vocabulary (d = 1.04) and word reading (d = 0.69). Treatment students did not significantly outperform controls on a distal (i.e., not linked directly to the instructional focus of the intervention) measure of reading vocabulary (d = 0.38). The results, practical importance, and limitations are discussed. (Contains 3 tables.)

This report summarizes evaluation results for an efficacy study of the Leveled Literacy Intervention system (LLI) implemented in Tift County Schools (TCS) in Georgia and the Enlarged City School District of Middletown (ECSDM) in New York during the 2009-2010 school year. Developed by Fountas & Pinnell (2009) and published by Heinemann, LLI is a short-term, small-group, supplemental literacy intervention system designed for students in kindergarten through second grade (K-2) who struggle with literacy. The goal of LLI is to provide intensive support to help these early learners quickly achieve grade-level competency. Both school districts evaluated in this study adopted the targeted, small-group implementation model of LLI in their schools with support from Heinemann consultants providing LLI professional development. This report focuses on the implementation and impact of this model during the first full school year of the system in these schools. The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to determine the efficacy of the Leveled Literacy Intervention system (LLI) in increasing reading achievement for K-2 students; (2) to examine the implementation fidelity of LLI; and (3) to determine perceptions of the LLI system according to relevant stakeholders. This study focused on two U.S. school districts and comprised 427 K-2 students who were matched demographically and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. This evaluation used a mixed-methods design to address the following key research questions: (1) What progress in literacy do students who receive LLI make compared to students who receive only regular classroom literacy instruction? (2) Was LLI implemented with fidelity to the developers' model? and (3) What were LLI teachers' perceptions of LLI and its impact on their students' literacy? Altogether, the results from this evaluation allow us to conclude that the LLI system positively impacts students' literacy skills. These results also suggest that continued implementation of LLI would be beneficial in both Tift County Schools and the Enlarged City School District of Middletown. From this evaluation, CREP proposes several recommendations. (Contains 34 tables, 8 footnotes, and 1 figure.) [This study was supported by funding from Heinemann Publishing.]

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct a large-scale evaluation of comprehensive teacher induction. The purpose of the study was to determine whether augmenting the set of services districts usually provide to support beginning teachers with a more comprehensive program improves teacher and student outcomes. This is the study's third and final report on the program's impacts. This report compares retention, achievement, and classroom practices of teachers who were offered comprehensive induction services to teachers who were offered the support normally offered by the school. Teachers assigned to receive comprehensive induction for either one or two years were supported by a full-time mentor who received ongoing training and materials to support the teachers' development. The teachers also were offered monthly professional development sessions and opportunities to observe veteran teachers. The teachers were followed for three years. Data was collected from 1,009 beginning teachers in 418 schools in 17 districts. Districts included in the study were not already offering comprehensive induction services, including paying for full-time mentors. Novice teachers in approximately half of the schools were assigned by lottery to receive comprehensive induction services. In 10 of the districts, these teachers were provided one year of comprehensive induction services; in the remaining 7 districts, the teachers were provided two years of services. Teachers in the schools not assigned to receive comprehensive induction services were provided the support normally offered to novice teachers by the school. Teacher practices were measured via classroom observations conducted in the spring of 2006. Data on teacher retention were collected via surveys administered in the fall of 2006, 2007, and 2008. Student test scores were collected from district administrative records for the 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08 school years. Key findings include: (1) During the comprehensive induction program, treatment teachers received more support than control teachers; (2) The extra induction support for treatment teachers did not translate into impacts on classroom practices in the first year; (3) For teachers who received one year of comprehensive induction, there was no impact on student achievement; (4) For teachers who received two years of comprehensive induction, there was no impact on student achievement in the first two years. In the third year, there was a positive and statistically significant impact on student achievement; and (5) Neither exposure to one year nor exposure to two years of comprehensive induction had a positive impact on retention or other teacher workforce outcomes. The following are appended: (1) Supplemental Information for Chapters II and III; (2) Supplemental Information for Chapter IV; (3) Sensitivity Analyses and Supplemental Information for Chapter V; and (4) Sensitivity Analyses and Supplemental Information for Chapter VI.

This study examines the impact of "Disaggregate Instruction" on students' science learning. "Disaggregate Instruction" is the idea that science teaching and learning can be separated into conceptual and discursive components. Using randomly assigned experimental and control groups, 49 fifth-grade students received web-based science lessons on photosynthesis using our experimental approach. We supplemented quantitative statistical comparisons of students' performance on pre- and post-test questions (multiple choice and short answer) with a qualitative analysis of students' post-test interviews. The results revealed that students in the experimental group outscored their control group counterparts across all measures. In addition, students taught using the experimental method demonstrated an improved ability to write using scientific language as well as an improved ability to provide oral explanations using scientific language. This study has important implications for how science educators can prepare teachers to teach diverse student populations. (Contains 8 tables, 1 figure and 2 notes.)

The present study aims to advance the extant research base by evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of an academic vocabulary program designed for use in mainstream middle school classrooms with high proportions of language minority learners. The quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study was conducted in 21 classes (13 treatment matched to 8 control) in seven middle schools in a large district, with 476 sixth-grade students (346 language minority learners, 130 native English speakers). Classroom observations and teacher logs indicated the 18-week program was implemented with good fidelity and that the approach contrasted sharply with the standard district English language arts (ELA) curriculum. Multilevel modeling indicated that the program resulted in significant effects on several aspects of vocabulary knowledge, including meanings of taught words (d = 0.39; p less than 0.0001), morphological awareness (d = 0.20; p = 0.0003), and the word meanings as presented in expository text (d = 0.20; p = 0.0227). The program also yielded marginally significant, but promising effects on a depth of word knowledge measure (d = 0.15; p = 0.0830) and a norm-referenced measure of reading comprehension (d = 0.15; p = 0.0568). No effects were found on a norm-referenced vocabulary measure. These effects were comparable for language minority learners and their native-English-speaking classmates. Data from teachers shed light on the challenges of meeting students' diverse instructional needs and the roles of curriculum and professional networks in building instructional capacity. The findings show promise in developing effective multifaceted vocabulary instruction for implementation by ELA teachers in middle school classrooms with high numbers of language minority learners.

The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an intervention--Quality English and Science Teaching (QuEST)--designed to develop the science knowledge and academic language of middle grades English language learners studying science in their second language and their English-proficient classmates. Both English language learners and English-proficient students are incorporated in this study design, and the authors have tested explicitly for interactions of language status with experimental and traditional forms of instruction. Overall, it appears that the implementation of QuEST improves the quality of teachers' science instruction and raises student performance on curriculum based measures of Vocabulary and Science. Project QuEST differed from the practices in the control classrooms by making alterations to accommodate the needs of ELLs and build on their strengths. Consistent with the literature on effective L2 instruction, the content was made clear to students through the use of visuals, modeling, and ongoing discussion. Additionally, students' English oral proficiency was developed in the context of science instruction through explicit vocabulary instruction, guided reading, and partnering with classmates who were more English proficient. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

This study compared traditional and multimedia-enhanced read-aloud vocabulary instruction and investigated whether the effects differed for English-language learners (ELLs) and non-English-language learners (non-ELLs). Results indicate that although there was no added benefit of multimedia-enhanced instruction for non-ELLs, there was a positive effect for ELLs on a researcher-designed measure and on a measure of general vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, for children in the multimedia-enhanced condition, the gap between non-ELLs and ELLs in knowledge of instructional words was closed, and the gap in general vocabulary knowledge was narrowed. The multimedia support did not negatively impact non-ELLs, indicating the potential of multimedia-enhanced vocabulary instruction for ELLs in inclusive settings. (Contains 2 tables.)

The significant increase of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the United States raises complex questions about how to provide these students with access to high quality education that can improve both their content knowledge of school subjects and their English proficiency, particularly their academic English proficiency. The development of proficiency in academic English is a central challenge in science education because science has a unique language of its own which includes extensive technical vocabulary, specialized grammatical forms, and unfamiliar discourse patterns fundamentally different from the everyday English that ELLs use in their daily lives. Additionally, in order to become scientifically literate, students not only need to understand scientific phenomena, but also must be able to communicate their ideas in scientific ways, both of which require an appropriate level of proficiency in scientific language. Although acquiring both scientific content and language simultaneously is already demanding for most students, the challenges that ELLs face are even more serious. Most ELLs are still developing English proficiency while learning science subjects, and even after ELLs become fluent in conversational English, they may still Jack the scientific language proficiency necessary to engage in science subjects. ELLs generally require a minimum of five to seven years to develop the appropriate grade level of academic language (of which scientific language is a sub-category) and to catch up with their English-proficient counterparts. Not surprisingly, the largest achievement gaps--on average, 39 points--in science subjects persist between ELLs and English-Proficient Students (EPSs). This study explored effective instructional approaches that can help ELLs master both the content and the language of science and possibly close the achievement gaps between ELLs and EPSs. The study specifically examined the impact of a technology-enhanced curriculum that consisted of two teaching approaches to ELLs' science learning: teaching science in everyday English (the Everyday Language approach) and using computer simulation to solve scientific problems (the Simulation approach). For this study, the technology-enhanced curriculum was carefully constructed based on the actual curriculum design, five design-based research studies, and consultation with fifth-grade teachers. The randomized experimental study was conducted with 220 fifth-grade ELLs and EPSs from four public elementary schools. Before the study began, all students took pretests and three students randomly selected from each class took pre-interviews. All students participated in six one-hour long consecutive science sessions about the concepts of photosynthesis and respiration. For the first three sessions, students received individual science instruction about the scientific concepts using a computer program. Students in the Everyday-Language condition (the Everyday-Simulation and the Everyday-Website groups) were taught in everyday language prior to the introduction of scientific language. By contrast, students in the Hybrid-Language condition (the Hybrid-Simulation and the Hybrid-Website groups) were taught simultaneously in both everyday language and scientific language (hybrid language). For the last three sessions, students were randomly assigned to triads stratified by gender and English proficiency, and each triad participated in a series of problem-solving activities. Students in the Simulation condition (the Everyday-Simulation and the Hybrid-Simulation groups) used a computer simulation program, whereas students in the Website condition (the Everyday-Website and the Hybrid-Website groups) used a simple website. After the study, all students took the posttests, and the same three students participated in post-interviews. Overall, the results of this study suggest that both teaching science in everyday language and using computer simulation to solve scientific problems can be beneficial for ELLs' science learning. However, in order for ELLs to master both the content and the language of science, it is important to provide them not only with access to scientific language, but also with multiple opportunities to use this scientific language in different academic contexts because only understanding scientific language alone does not always prepare ELLs to be able to use the language to communicate their understanding of scientific ideas appropriately. In this study, ELLs taught in everyday language prior to the introduction of scientific language significantly outperformed ELLs taught in hybrid language. Among those ELLs taught in everyday language, ELLs who used computer simulation during problem-solving activities demonstrated both a more improved understanding of scientific phenomena and a superior ability to use scientific language accurately for different purposes, compared to ELLs who used the website to solve scientific problems. The results of the study also indicate the potential advantage of computer simulation for decreasing the learning gap between ELLs and EPSs. The use of computer simulation was more effective in enhancing ELLs' scientific knowledge and their use of scientific language than the use of the website, but the simulation was not beneficial for EPSs' science learning. Since ELLs' performance improved so markedly with the use of computer simulation, while that of EPSs remained roughly the same, this form of pedagogy resulted in no significant achievement gap between ELLs and EPSs taught in this manner. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Two experimental studies to improve vocabulary knowledge and comprehension were conducted in 7th-grade social studies classes with English language learners (ELLs). Two different nonoverlapping samples of classes of 7th-grade students (N = 381 and N = 507) were randomly assigned at the classroom (i.e., section) level to a social studies intervention or to business as usual comparison groups. The number of sections assigned to treatment was 7 and 9 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Eight sections were assigned to comparison in each experiment. In addition, students were randomly assigned to sections prior to assignment of sections to treatment and control. Treatment students received a multicomponent social studies instruction including explicit vocabulary instruction, use of structured pairing, strategic use of video to build concepts and promote discussion, and use of graphic organizers for approximately 12 weeks daily during social studies class. Findings indicated significant differences in favor of the treatment students on curriculum-based vocabulary and comprehension measures for both experimental studies for all students including students who were ELLs. (Contains 5 tables.)

This study examines the impact of professional development on teacher knowledge and quality early language and literacy practices in center- and home-based care settings. Participants from 291 sites (177 centers; 114 home-based) in four cities were randomly selected to: Group 1, 3-credit course in early language and literacy; Group 2, course plus ongoing coaching; Group 3, control group. Analysis of covariance indicated no significant differences between groups on teacher knowledge. However, there were statistically significant improvements in language and literacy practices for teachers who received coursework plus coaching with substantial effect sizes for both center- and home-based providers. Professional development alone had negligible effects on improvements in quality practices. Coursework and coaching may represent a promising quality investment in early childhood. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

In practice, teacher induction is common, but induction that is intensive, comprehensive, structured, and sequentially delivered in response to teachers' emerging pedagogical needs is less so. Congressional interest in formal, comprehensive teacher induction has grown in recent years. The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance within the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Institute of Education Sciences (IES) contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR), to evaluate the impact of structured and intensive teacher induction programs. The study examines whether comprehensive teacher induction programs lead to higher teacher retention rates and other positive teacher and student outcomes as compared to prevailing, generally less comprehensive approaches to supporting new teachers. More specifically, the study is designed to address five research questions on the impacts of teacher induction services: (1) What is the effect of comprehensive teacher induction on the types and intensity of induction services teachers receive compared to the services they receive from the districts' current induction programs?; (2) What are the impacts on teachers' classroom practices?; (3) What are the impacts on student achievement?; (4) What are the impacts on teacher retention?; and (5) What is the impact on the composition of the district's teaching workforce? Statistically significant differences between the treatment and control groups were identified in the amount, types, and content of induction support teachers reported having received, both in the fall and the spring of the intervention year. Although treatment teachers reported receiving more mentoring than did control teachers; were more likely than control teachers to report participating in specific induction activities; and spent more time in certain professional activities than did control teachers during the three months prior to the spring survey, summarized comparisons between treatment and control groups found: (1) No impacts on teacher practices; (2) No positive impacts on student test scores; (3) No impacts on teacher retention; and (4) No positive impacts on composition of district teaching workforce. This report focused on the first year of findings only. The research team is conducting longer term follow-up to include additional collection of test score and teacher mobility data. Eight appendices are included: (1) National Data on Teacher Induction; (2) Analysis Weights; (3) Impact Estimation Methods; (4) Classroom Observation Methods; (5) Reference Tables for Chapter II; (6) Supplemental Tables for Chapter IV; (7) Supplemental Tables for Chapter V; and (8) Supplemental Figures. (Contains 43 footnotes, 15 figures and 101 tables.)

This study investigated the effectiveness of a multicomponent reading intervention implemented with middle school students with severe reading difficulties, all of whom had received remedial and/or special education for several years with minimal response to intervention. Participants were 38 students in grades 6-8 who had severe deficits in word reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Most were Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) with identified disabilities. Nearly all demonstrated severely limited oral vocabularies in English and, for ELLs, in both English and Spanish. Students were randomly assigned to receive the research intervention (n = 20) or typical instruction provided in their school's remedial reading or special education classes (n = 18). Students in the treatment group received daily explicit and systematic small-group intervention for 40 minutes over 13 weeks, consisting of a modified version of a phonics-based remedial program augmented with English as a Second Language practices and instruction in vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension strategies. Results indicated that treatment students did not demonstrate significantly higher outcomes in word recognition, comprehension, or fluency than students who received the school's typical instruction and that neither group demonstrated significant growth over the course of the study. Significant correlations were found between scores on teachers' ratings of students' social skills and problem behaviors and posttest decoding and spelling scores, and between English oral vocabulary scores and scores in word identification and comprehension. The researchers hypothesize that middle school students with the most severe reading difficulties, particularly those who are ELLs and those with limited oral vocabularies, may require intervention of considerably greater intensity than that provided in this study. Further research directly addressing features of effective remediation for these students is needed.

This study investigated the effects of three instructional conditions on precursors to successful reading for Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL). The study was conducted using a randomized, alternate treatment control group design specifically targeting phonological awareness (PA) listening comprehension (LC), and decoding in a sample of ELL (N = 82) including students who were and were not at risk for later reading failure. Two randomly assigned experimental intervention groups and one treatment control group were created to test the effectiveness of three instructional interventions that differed in the relative amount of time used for instructing the word- and text-level targeted skills. Specifically, the two experimental intervention groups received different doses of LC relative to PA instruction, creating a LC Concentration group and a PA Concentration group. The treatment control group received only PA and alphabet knowledge instruction (word-level skills). Results indicated that both at-risk and not-at-risk ELLs in the LC Concentration group outperformed students in the other groups on almost all measures, including PA skills, despite minimal amounts of instructional time-targeting word-level skills. These data extend the existing literature by lending empirical support to the use of a LC component in early reading interventions for young ELL.

Two studies of Grade 1 reading interventions for English-language (EL) learners at risk for reading problems were conducted. Two samples of EL students were randomly assigned to a treatment or untreated comparison group on the basis of their language of instruction for core reading (i.e., Spanish or English). In all, 91 students completed the English study (43 treatment and 48 comparison), and 80 students completed the Spanish study (35 treatment and 45 comparison). Treatment students received approximately 115 sessions of supplemental reading daily for 50 minutes in groups of 3 to 5. Findings from the English study revealed statistically significant differences in favor of treatment students on English measures of phonological awareness, word attack, word reading, and spelling (effect sizes of 0.35-0.42). Findings from the Spanish study revealed significant differences in favor of treatment students on Spanish measures of phonological awareness, letter-sound and letter-word identification, verbal analogies, word reading fluency, and spelling (effect sizes of 0.33-0.81).

In low-performing public high schools in U.S. cities, high proportions of students drop out, students who stay in school typically do not succeed academically, and efforts to make substantial reforms often meet with little success. The Talent Development High School model is a comprehensive school reform initiative that has been developed to address these challenges. Targeting some of the most troubled schools in the country, the model seeks to raise the expectations of teachers and students and to prepare all students for postsecondary education and employment. MDRC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit education and social policy research organization, conducted an independent, third-party evaluation of Talent Development. This rigorous evaluation focuses on the first five high schools to begin using the model in the School District of Philadelphia. The evaluation follows 20 cohorts of ninth-grade students for up to four years of high school using a comparative interrupted time series research design. Appended are: (1) Tables for First-Time Ninth-Grade Students; and (2) Tables for Repeating Ninth-Grade Students. (Contains 16 tables, 9 figures, and 3 boxes.)[Dissemination of MDRC publications is also supported by Starr Foundation.]

Gaps in reading performance between Anglo and Latino children are associated with gaps in vocabulary knowledge. An intervention was designed to enhance fifth graders' academic vocabulary. The meanings of academically useful words were taught together with strategies for using information from context, from morphology, from knowledge about multiple meanings, and from cognates to infer word meaning. Among the principles underlying the intervention were that new words should be encountered in meaningful text, that native Spanish speakers should have access to the text's meaning through Spanish, that words should be encountered in varying contexts, and that word knowledge involves spelling, pronunciation, morphology, and syntax as well as depth of meaning. Fifth graders in the intervention group showed greater growth than the comparison group on knowledge of the words taught, on depth of vocabulary knowledge, on understanding multiple meanings, and on reading comprehension. The intervention effects were as large for the English-language learners (ELLs) as for the English-only speakers (EOs), though the ELLs scored lower on all pre- and posttest measures. The results show the feasibility of improving comprehension outcomes for students in mixed ELLEO classes, by teaching word analysis and vocabulary learning strategies.

The cooperative elementary school model uses cooperation, particularly cooperative learning, as a philosophy for educational change. A 2-year study of the cooperative elementary school model in 2 treatment and 3 comparison schools involving 1,012 students demonstrates positive effects on academic achievement and social relations. (SLD)