The Kauffman School is a public, tuition-free charter school serving Kansas City students. In the 2019-20 school year, the school enrolled 1,186 students in grades 5 through 12. Most (88 percent) of the students were low income, and 89 percent were Black or Hispanic. To measure the impact of the Kauffman School on its students, the authors…

The focus of this paper is on detailing the decisions made when we created, implemented and studied a mathematics professional development (PD) program in low-performing, urban schools. Our program held many characteristics espoused by researchers as critical for effectiveness. We begin by reviewing the characteristics of quality PD programs that…

This study is an evaluation of "Exploring Motion and Forces: Speed, Acceleration, and Friction" ("M&F") developed by ARIES of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2001). Although "M&F" has been used in many schools and field-tested, it has never been evaluated in rigorous experimental or…

Despite recent calls for border crossing between reading and science, few studies have examined the impact of reading infusion in the science curriculum on students' science literacy. In this quasi-experimental study, the authors investigated the effects of an inquiry-based science curriculum that integrated explicit reading strategy instruction…

As indicated in papers 2 and 3 of this symposium and in published research from Project REAL, there is clear evidence that the SEALS model has a general positive impact on the school context during the early adolescent years. The purpose of this study was to identify key process factors that support gains to academic outcomes in general, but…

There is a lack of implementation of instructional strategies to assist middle school teachers in improving mathematics education for their students. Coaching is one solution to this problem, but its impact on student achievement is unclear. This case study evaluated the relationship between coaching and teacher efficacy and the impact of these…

This meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programs for improving the academic skills of students enrolled in public schools Grades K-8 in the United States and further investigates for whom and under what conditions tutoring can be effective. The authors found 21 studies (with 28 different study cohorts in those studies)…

Components of the School Renaissance[R] program, including Accelerated Reader and Reading Renaissance, have been implemented in more than 65,000 schools in the United States. Despite the program's popularity, there have been no published, well-controlled evaluations of its effectiveness. This randomized field experiment was designed to gauge…