Context: Assessments of baseline equivalency of intervention and control groups, "balance," play a critical role in evaluating educational interventions. The highest What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the Institute of Educational Studies (IES) standard for educational studies, "Meets WWC Design Standards Without Reservations,"…

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools--which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools)--to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises…

This report describes a cluster randomized control trial (RCT) intervention study of the effectiveness of the ABRACADABRA (ABRA) Web-based literacy system using a classroom-level RCT intervention with 1,067 children in 74 kindergarten and Grade 1 or Grade 1/2 classrooms across Canada. The authors closely followed the CONSORT criteria for executing…

An existing school program in which therapy dogs are integrated into the reading curriculum was analyzed to determine the effect on student reading. Previous literature suggests an improvement in both reading skills and attitudes towards reading when students read in the presence of a therapy dog. Using a mixed method model, the researchers…

This paper introduces an empirical strategy to estimate dynamic treatment effects in randomized trials that provide treatment in multiple stages and in which various noncompliance problems arise such as attrition and selective transitions between treatment and control groups. Our approach is applied to the highly influential four year randomized…

Introduction: Our research focused on studying the extent to which the planned, systematic use of educational videogames can result in the generation of learning contexts conducive to developing Multiple Intelligences (MIs) amongst schoolchildren. Methodology: A twofold methodological approach was adopted: a) qualitative: previous assessment and…

Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term, one-to-one intervention designed to help the lowest achieving readers in first grade. This article presents first-year results from the multisite randomized controlled trial (RCT) and implementation study under the $55 million Investing in Innovation (i3) Scale-Up Project. For the 2011-2012 school year, the…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of using e-textbooks, activities, games, and worksheets that loaded onto students tablets on first grade students' achievement on their core curriculum (science, math, English, Arabic) compared to the use of the traditional teaching method. It also, investigated the school administration reflection toward…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a classroom-teacher-delivered reading intervention for struggling readers called the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI), designed particularly for kindergarten and first-grade teachers and their struggling students in rural, low-wealth communities. The TRI was delivered via an innovative…

The purpose of this study was to explore vocabulary acquisition of primary grade children. Specifically, the study used a unique teaching strategy that added physical movement to typical read-aloud sessions with kindergarten and first grade children. Although a review of reading research revealed a plethora of studies, very few studies…

Objective: Examine the influence of altering the size of snack food (ie, small vs large cookies) on short-term energy intake. Methods: First- and sixth-graders (n = 77) participated in a between-subjects experimental design. All participants were offered the same gram weight of cookies during an afternoon tea at their school. For half of the…

The study was implemented in the Title I Marinette School District using a randomized experimental design and parallel quasi experimental design spanning three grades 1-3 in 3 district elementary schools. The Remediation Plus Intervention is a multi-sensory, systematic synthetic phonics curriculum for all ages of students who struggle with…

In this study, the authors conceptualize teaching episodes such as an integrated set of observable student-teacher interactions. Instructional interactions that take place between teachers and students around critical academic content are a defining characteristic of classroom instruction and a component carefully defined in many education…

This is the second of three reports from MDRC's evaluation of the Success for All (SFA) scale-up demonstration, funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. The report presents updated findings on SFA's implementation and impacts in the scale-up sites participating in the evaluation. The i3 evaluation…

The purposes of this study were to determine the effectiveness of a vocabulary intervention for first-grade students at risk for reading and language difficulties and to compare the results of a regression discontinuity design to those of an experimental design. The specific research questions were: (1) Do first-graders who are at risk of reading…