The United States considers educating all students to a threshold of adequate outcomes to be a central goal of educational justice. The No Child Left Behind Act introduced evidence-based policy and accountability protocols to ensure that all students receive an education that enables them to meet adequacy standards. Unfortunately, evidence-based…

The United States and much of the world is struggling with what "education" and being "educated" mean. Daily media are replete with debates on issues ranging from gender and class rights to the ideological and practical purpose of education. Prominent among these debates are discussions about whether education should be geared…

This article examines urban school-university partnership research after No Child Left Behind. Central to the review is an analysis in the trend of research methods utilized across studies. It was found that many studies are single-case studies or anecdotal. There are few quantitative, sustained qualitative, or mixed-methods studies represented in…

The principal assertion of this article is that Indigenous research methodologies should be used to develop educational policies and practices for Native students. The history of American educational research is marred by a near complete dismissal of Indigenous knowledge, as Western research methodologies continue to define the landscape of P-12…

This synthesis examined the research literature from 1965 to 2009 on the assistive technology that is used by individuals with visual impairments. The authors located and reviewed 256 articles for evidence-based research on assistive technology that had a positive impact on educational performance. Of the 256 studies, only 2 provided promising…

Interrupted time-series (ITS) are often used to assess the causal effect of a planned or even unplanned shock introduced into an on-going process. The pre-intervention slope is supposed to index the causal counterfactual, and deviations from it in mean, slope or variance are used to indicate an effect. However, a secure causal inference is only…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 inaugurated important changes in assessment and accountability for English Learner (EL) students. Specifically, Title III of the law required states to develop or adopt English-language proficiency (ELP) standards aligned with language demands of…

Over the past two decades, community organizing has emerged as an effective force for school improvement. In the context of shrinking education funding, stubborn opportunity and achievement gaps between low-income and wealthy children and between children of color and White children, and polarizing debate on school reform, community organizing…

The Center on Education Policy (CEP) report, "Has Progress Been Made in Raising Achievement for English Language Learners?", finds that some states have seen increases in the number of English language learners (ELLs) meeting proficiency standards under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), while others have seen decreases. The report notes some…

The No Child Left Behind Act is comprised of four pillars, one of which is "proven education methods." This paper attempts to provide a historical context for the development of evidence-based education by examining its foundation in medical practice. Next, the rationale for evidence of educational effectiveness based on a scientific…

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, underperforming schools have had to adopt research-based models for school reform, without a practical understanding of what that means. This article brings more clarity for educational leaders as they come to decide on how to fit a reform model to their school-specific contexts.

This article addresses the "state of qualitative inquiry" in the sense of how that inquiry is being positioned in the current construction of a US national policy agenda for "scientifically based" education research. In the author's view, qualitative inquiry is being drowned out in the national agenda despite its ability to…

Employing a critical-empirical approach to the study of college access, the author explores the role of policy researchers in seeking educational equity. (Contains 2 tables.)

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) permits the Secretary of Education to use NAEP achievement level scores, in concert with other data, to confirm state testing results. The U.S. Department of Education has not yet published a guidance document describing how NAEP might be used appropriately. A review of the literature from the Department and…

In May of 1999, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences hosted a conference on ways to improve the scientific quality of educational research. In medicine, thanks to work 40 years ago by 2 researchers, Howard Hyatt and Frederick Mosteller, the commitment of medical professionals to base their diagnoses and prescriptions on clinical trials in…