The majority of states have laws in place that require teacher evaluations and many states are tying teacher evaluations and teacher effectiveness to tenure and dismissal policies. Historically, the teacher evaluation process has been conducted by the school principal and has commonly been disconnected from the teacher development processes that…

The social emotional and mental health of students play a vital role in the academic, behavioral, and social emotional learning of students in school. The Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework is recognized to be an effective mental health framework. The current study provided a summative evaluation of the status of mental health…

In 2019, California State University (CSU), Chico was awarded a five-year Teaching Quality Partnership (TQP) grant to implement the Computational Literacy Across Secondary Settings (CLASS) program. The goal of this program was to recruit, prepare, and retain highly qualified individuals into the teaching profession, with a focus on high-need rural…

Over the course of six years, a diverse group of school districts and charter management organizations in California ran a substantial experiment in implementing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in elementary and middle grades. WestEd led an extensive evaluation of that effort, the California K-8 NGSS Early Implementers Initiative,…

This 13th report in WestEd's evaluation of the K-8 Early Implementers Initiative for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) provides an extensive response to the following question: What does NGSS science teaching look like in the classroom? The report first discusses Initiative teachers' experiences with four instructional practices that…

The purpose of this study was to identify Core components perceived by faculty to be effective in their prominent graduate entrepreneurship education programs. The study sought to identify the best practices in graduate entrepreneurship education programs from the perceptions of faculty in the field. Research questions guiding the study were: (1)…

Through the Innovative Professional Development (iPD) Challenge, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in helping school districts and networks redesign their professional development systems to serve educators better and improve student performance. MDRC's evaluation of the iPD Challenge involves case studies and multiple rounds of…

The National Math + Science Initiative (NMSI) is a nonprofit organization committed to improving educational outcomes that traces its roots back to the early 1990s. NMSI's College Readiness Program (CRP) is a long-standing program with the goal of promoting STEM education in high schools to improve students' preparation for college. The three-year…

This paper discusses the implementation and evaluation of an innovative professional development program that supported 8th grade mathematics teachers in designing learning activities that assisted students in developing a conceptual understanding of mathematics. Funded by an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the U.S. Department of…

The purpose of this paper is to address the need for guidance on professional standards for educational practices in online education. Since 1995, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) has provided leadership in the introduction and successful implementation of distance education. During this time, the ASCCC has played a…

This study focused on a postsecondary organization in California, which has embarked on a groundbreaking, highly interactive online Master of Arts in Teaching Program. This program provides students with the flexibility and ability to not only share and interact with peers from across the nation but also work with a diverse group of instructors.…

The Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model is a comprehensive, strength-based approach to education that aims to improve achievement for all students by improving a school's effectiveness at building relationships, leveraging real-time student data, and capitalizing on the strengths of each student. The U.S. Department of Education's…

In 2014, ETS conducted a study investigating how the New Careers in Nursing (NCIN) program may have influenced the culture of participating schools of nursing. Select schools of nursing received grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide scholarships and support services for students in accelerated nursing programs. Case studies…

The Claremont Colleges Library conducted direct rubric assessment of Pitzer College First-Year Seminar research papers to analyze the impact of diverse levels of librarian course collaborations on information literacy (IL) performance in student writing. Findings indicate that progressive degrees of librarian engagement in IL-related course…

Mental Health Problems among college and university students represent a significant public health issue in the United States. Mental disorders account for nearly one-half of the disease burden for young adults in the United States (World Health Organization, 2008), and most lifetime mental disorders have first onset by age 24 (Kessler et al.,…