General Resources

Supporting Academic Learning and Development through Evidence-Based Practices A Practitioner’s Guide to Improving Literacy Outcomes for Students Chronic Absenteeism Summer, Afterschool and Other Out-of-School Time Settings Data Science Education General Resources

Evidence-Based Practice to Accelerate Student Learning

Using, generating, and sharing evidence about effective strategies to support students, known collectively as evidence-based practices, gives stakeholders an important tool to accelerate student learning.

The Department's non-regulatory guidance on using evidence to strengthen education investments identifies a five-step continuous improvement process that is designed to promote the reflective use of evidence-based practices, yielding better outcomes for students.

Read more to learn about:

  • What is an evidence-based practice?
  • How to identify local needs
  • How to select a relevant evidence-based practices
  • How to plan for and implement an evidence-based practice
  • How to examine and reflect the outcomes associated with a practice's use

The primary purpose of a needs assessment is to understand the most pressing needs of students, schools, and/or educators and the potential root causes of those needs (see Step 1 in the Department's non-regulatory guidance on using evidence to strengthen education investments. Those needs may be academic, and may also include basic needs (e.g., food security), social and emotional needs, or concerns related to mental health or physical wellness.

Some Department programs have specific guidance concerning needs assessment, including the stakeholder groups that must be consulted as part of the process and components of the process itself. Several of those programs, both current and historic, have produced resources to support the needs sensing process. Selected resources are included below. Because program requirements change, participants are strongly urged to consult with Department staff members about the most recent available guidance about needs sensing.

Whenever possible, educators should seek to address needs identified through the needs assessment process with evidence-based practices. As noted in the Department's non-regulatory guidance on using evidence to strengthen education investments, the selection of specific practices should be driven by factors that include (a) the strength of evidence supporting a practice; (b) the relevance of that evidence to the observed need, including similarities in education settings and student populations; and (c) the organization's capacity to implement the intervention, including human, financial, and other resources.

The resources below, developed by the Department or its contractors, may be valuable in helping you select evidence-based practices.

The success of any program, including the introduction of an evidence-base practice, depends in part on its implementation. As described in the Department's non-regulatory guidance on using evidence to strengthen education investments, high-quality implementation can be encouraged through thoughtful advanced planning and, once implementation has begun, ensuring implementers have the supports and resources they need to do so effectively.

The resources below, developed by the Department or its contractors, may be valuable in helping plan for implementation and, one implementation has begun, supporting its success.

  • The Office of Special Education Program's State Implementation and Scaling-Up of Evidence Based Practices Center, part of the National Implementation Research Network at the University of North Carolina's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, has released a series of 7 learning modules focused on implementation. You can access the modules at their Active Implementation Hub, which includes a brief overview video of their Active Implementation Framework.

Finally, monitoring both the implementation of evidence-based practices and the outcomes those practices are meant to affect is critical—both to determine whether the practices are being implemented as intended and to identify whether important student outcomes are being achieved. As noted in the Department's non-regulatory guidance on using evidence to strengthen education investments, a variety of strategies—ranging from performance monitoring to rigorous evaluation—can support program improvement and further efforts to build evidence of practices' effectiveness.

The resources below, developed by the Department or its contractors, may be valuable in monitoring the performance of evidence-based practices once implemented.