The ongoing literacy crisis in the U.S. highlights an urgent need for effective, scalable literacy instruction. REED Charitable Foundation (RCF) is a non-profit organization that provides structured literacy training informed by Orton-Gillingham, along with ongoing professional coaching and comprehensive implementation support to help all students…

Bilingual children demonstrate varying levels of proficiency in each of the two languages to which they are exposed. Even though it is widely acknowledged that bilingual children are not a homogenous group, existing studies on dual-language profiles in bilingual children have focused on expressive language profiles. In this study, we used the…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has been emphasizing the importance of teachers' pedagogical communication as part of mathematical teaching and learning for decades. Specifically, NCTM has provided guidance on how teachers can foster mathematical communication that positively impacts student learning. A teacher may have…

Previous research has shown that providing video recommendations to students in virtual learning environments implemented at scale positively affects student achievement. However, it is also critical to evaluate whether the treatment effects are heterogeneous, and whether they depend on contextual variables such as disadvantaged student status and…

We present an analysis of log data from a semester's use of the OpenDSA eTextbook system with the goal of determining the most difficult course topics in a data structures course. While experienced instructors can identify which topics students most struggle with, this often comes only after much time and effort, and does not provide real-time…

This paper reports on a case study conducted in an American university investigating the role of feedback within a distance education environment. Based on data gathered from online and hybrid undergraduate students in a teacher education program and supported by existing research, we describe how we support online learners by implementing a…

The present article considers a fundamental question in evaluation research: "By how much do program effects vary across sites?" The article first presents a theoretical model of cross-site impact variation and a related estimation model with a random treatment coefficient and fixed site-specific intercepts. This approach eliminates…

Background: Prevention has been identified as a primary strategy for reducing health care costs, with potential Medicare savings up to $142.8 billion annually. Falls alone resulted in $28.2 billion in direct care costs. A growing body of research documents significant benefits of tai chi (TC) for balance and prevention and management of chronic…

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that…

Despite schools increasingly adopting multitiered systems of support (MTSS) for prevention and intervention of mental health concerns, many are slow to adopt universal mental health screening (UMHS), a core MTSS feature, due to concerns about their limited capacity to meet the needs of all identified. In this study, we examined differences in the…

The primary objective of this cross-cultural investigation is to compare patterns in student responses to an empirically scrutinized character education measure administered to students in four school districts in Florida with students in a school in Kenya. In this way, the generalizability of findings for scale scores could be compared across…

Expansion of the use of student test score data to measure teacher performance has fueled recent policy interest in using those data to measure the effects of school administrators as well. However, little research has considered the capacity of student performance data to uncover principal effects. Filling this gap, this article identifies…

Evidence that teachers' short-term instructional effects persist over time and predict substantial long-run impacts on students' lives provides much of the impetus for a wide range of educational reforms focused on identifying and responding to differences in teachers' value-added to student learning. However, relatively little research has…

Conceptualizations of developmental trends are driven by the particular method used to analyze the period of change of interest. Various techniques exist to analyze developmental data, including individual growth curve analysis in observed and latent frameworks, cross-lagged regression to assess interrelations among variables, and multilevel…

Recent studies suggest that the number of students pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees has been generally decreasing. An extensive body of research cites the lack of motivation and engagement in the learning process as a major underlying reason of this decline. It has been discussed that if properly…