The purpose of this report is to present the results of a two-year randomized control trial evaluation of the SPARK literacy program. SPARK is an early grade literacy program developed by Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee. In 2010, SPARK was awarded an Investing in Innovation (i3) Department of Education grant to further develop the…

This study investigates the effects and feasibility of an intervention for first-grade students at risk for reading difficulties or disabilities (RD). The intervention was provided by general education classroom teachers and consisted of 15 min whole-class comprehension lessons (Tier 1) and 30 min Tier 2 intervention sessions in word reading,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the i3-funded SPARK program on the literacy development of students in kindergarten through third grade. The SPARK program represents a collaboration between Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Public Schools. In the study, two cohorts of students were randomly…

In East Africa, there is great effort directed toward ensuring that there is learning and value for money invested in universal education policies initiated over the past decade. Kenya and Uganda are two countries that typify this effort. The effort includes the work of research organisations such as Uwezo, which assess learning levels; RTI, which…

This study describes an evaluation of a read aloud intervention to improve comprehension and vocabulary of first-grade students. Twelve teachers were randomly assigned to an intervention or comparison condition. The study lasted 19 weeks, and the intervention focused on the systematic use of narrative and expository texts and dialogic interactions…

Large scale longitudinal research (Morgan, Farkas, & Wu, 2009) and a meta-analysis (Duncan et al., 2007) have found that early mathematics achievement is a strong predictor of later mathematics achievement. In fact, end of Kindergarten and end of grade 1 mathematics achievement on ECLS-K and similar mathematics proficiency measures tends to be…

This study uses an existing evaluation model and previously established measurement tools to evaluate the quality and success of Urban Compass, a private non-profit after-school program for elementary school children in the Watts district of Los Angeles. This evaluation had two major objectives. The first objective was to assess program quality by…

The Instant Word Notebook study was a program evaluation completed by two educators who saw a need for an instructional tool to teach and assess Instant Words. In order to address reading deficits of students in first and second grades, teachers were expected to teach Instant Words. Unfortunately, teachers did not have a systematic process to…

The goals of the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) are to: (1) determine the impacts of Head Start on children's school readiness and parental practices that support children's development; and (2) to determine under what circumstances Head Start achieves its greatest impacts and for which children (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2010).…

In 2007, Georgia developed a comprehensive framework to define what students need to know. One component of this framework emphasizes the use of both formative and summative assessments as part of an integral and specific component of the teachers. performance evaluation. Georgia administers the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) to every…

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…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the implementation of a Response to Intervention framework had a positive impact on student reading achievement in urban elementary schools. This was a causal-comparative study that examined the reading performance of a sample of kindergarten through grade three students who experienced the Response to…

This paper presents the results of an independent two-year evaluation of the I Can Problem Solve (ICPS) universal prevention program, implemented in kindergarten and first grade classrooms in a racially and ethnically diverse urban school district. Matched pairs of schools were assigned to Instruction (i.e., treatment) or Control status. Teachers…

The authors conducted an experiment during the 2003-2004 school year to determine whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a product to help elementary students learn to read and speak English, was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than materials already in place. In the California study, 384 English…

The authors were asked to find out whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a supplementary, text-based product to help elementary school students learn to read and speak English was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than the materials the districts already had in place. They conducted an experiment…