Objective: After the discontinuation of School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) in 2016, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began exploring innovative ways to gather school health information using existing surveillance systems. School Health Profiles (Profiles) is a school-based system of surveys that monitors…

The growing awareness of the importance of the first year of high school for future success has prompted schools and districts across the country to develop interventions designed for ninth-graders. "Growth mindset" is an intervention that aims to increase students' desire to take on challenges and to enhance their persistence in school…

The Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) is a three-year teacher residency program that seeks to recruit, support, and retain a diverse, highly effective, and culturally competent educator workforce that is committed to working in high-needs schools and to improving student outcomes. This evaluation…

The Afterschool Alliance, in partnership with MetLife Foundation, is proud to present the final issue brief in their latest series of four issue briefs examining critical issues facing middle school youth and the vital role afterschool programs play in addressing these issues. This brief explores afterschool and data utilization to improve…

This article describes original research to determine reasons graduate students do not complete requirements for a Master's (M.Ed.) in Middle Level Education degree at the Southeastern University. Since the program's initial cohort the graduation rate has decreased. Program faculty was concerned about the increasing difference between the number…

Providing academic assistance to English Language Learners (ELLs) is varied and often ineffective. The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to determine if there was a relationship between 9th grade students' performance on the High School Graduation Exam (HSGE) in reading and language and the Push-in and Pull-out models of instruction.…

The concept of "implementation fidelity" is broadly used to capture the extent to which an intervention is executed as intended by the designers of the intervention (Century, Rudnick, & Freeman, 2010; Huntley, 2005, McNaught, Tarr, & Sears, 2010, Munter, 2010). Though implementation fidelity instruments are often used to assess…

The purpose of this action research study was to conduct a professional development activity to provide content-area teachers with academic vocabulary strategies to be implemented during instruction on a daily basis. Professional development is essential for teachers to gain new knowledge and skills in order to hone their craft to improve student…

Restorative practices in schools lack rigorous evaluation studies. As an example of rigorous school-based research, this article describes the first randomized control trial of restorative practices to date, the Study of Restorative Practices. It is a 5-year, cluster-randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Restorative Practices Intervention (RPI)…

aimswebPlus® is an assessment, data management, and reporting system that provides national and local performance and growth norms for the screening and progress monitoring of math and reading skills for all students in kindergarten through 8th grade. aimswebPlus uses two types of measures: (1) "curriculum-based measures" (CBMs)--brief,…

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of implementing a middle school concept in three private Christian schools using Daniel Stufflebeam's CIPP model of program evaluation. The National Middle School Survey was used to measure faculty and administrative perceptions of both the value and actual implementation of middle school…

Out-of-school time (OST) youth programs are inherently difficult to assess. They are often very dynamic: Many youth interact with one another and with staff members in various physical environments. Despite the challenge, measuring quality is critical to help program directors and policy makers identify where to improve and how to support those…

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science Digital Library/Distributed Learning (NSDL) program turned 10 years old in 2010. This report presents results of a preliminary program evaluation carried out by RAND and is organized around three principal goals: (1) Provide an initial evaluation of NSDL based on existing information…

This article describes the lessons learned during the implementation of a new master's degree program for K-8 teachers. The program's goal was to increase student inquiry and sense making in mathematics and science classrooms. Each of the twenty-four teacher participants reported strong satisfaction with the program, and a variety of measures…

This is the final external evaluation report prepared by SRI International for the Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP) project, an investing in innovation (i3) development project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Operated by Virginia Advanced Study Strategies, Inc. (VASS), the RMEP project included six rural school districts (LEAs) in…