The purpose of this occasional paper is to compare point estimates and trends included in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Panel Study annual report: "National Data on Substance Use among Adults Ages 19 to 60, 1976-2021" prepared using historical post-stratification weights, with the same point estimates and trends obtained when using MTF…

The aim of the research reported here was to get some idea of the accuracy of grade boundaries (cut-scores) obtained by applying the 'similar items method' described in Bramley & Wilson (2016). In this method experts identify items on the current version of a test that are sufficiently similar to items on previous versions for them to be…

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, "Student achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency." The authors investigated two main research questions in this brief: (1) How do achievement gains…

These are the appendices for the technical report, "An Investigation of the Comparability of Commission-Approved Teaching Performance Assessment Models." California's Commission on Teacher Credentialing (Commission) requires all programs of preliminary multiple and single subject teacher preparation to use a Commission-approved Teaching…

The Lyceum, implemented by Guilford County Schools (GCS), was an arts education program designed to promote arts integration for all GCS students and exposure to Entertainment Arts & Technology for students at Penn-Griffin School for the Arts. The Lyceum impact evaluation used a quasi-experimental design (QED) to examine the effect of…

The purpose of this study was to compare student growth of SCSD-7 students on the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) reading assessment to otherwise similar students who did not use Istation. This study followed two cohorts of elementary school students over three years (2016-17 through 2018-19) to assess the effect of Istation on reading…

Because of concerns about test security, different test forms are typically used across different testing occasions. As a result, equating is necessary in order to get scores from the different test forms that can be used interchangeably. In order to assure the quality of equating, multiple equating methods are often examined. Various equity…

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on preschool children's school readiness skills remains understudied. This research investigates Head Start preschool children's early numeracy, literacy, and executive function outcomes during a pandemic-affected school year, using a novel virtual assessment methodology. Study children (N = 336; mean age = 51…

These are the appendixes for the report, "English Proficiency and the Pandemic: How Texas English Learner Students Fared during the COVID-19 Pandemic. REL 2023-144." This study examined levels of English proficiency before and during the COVID-19 pandemic among English learner students in grades 3-12 in Texas. In 2020-2021, nearly…

The engage2learn approach to educator support provides an in-person and virtual coaching system that builds capacity and engagement in public schools. Engage2learn hired LXD Research to conduct an independent evaluation and analysis of NWEA Math and Reading data collected during the 2021-2022 school year. The goal was to measure how engage2learn…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the implementation and impact of the IDEA Public Schools' Mathematics Curriculum Redesign (MCR) effort, funded by an Innovation and Research (EIR) grant. Methods: The study used a quasi-experimental matching design to examine the effect of MCR on student achievement outcomes. The study compared…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of Uncommon Schools in a turnaround setting. Uncommon was awarded a 2016 grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) to support TurnNJ, a project intended to support Uncommon's whole-school turnaround efforts in Camden and Newark, New Jersey. The study…

Teachers Educating All Multilingual Students (TEAMS) is a teacher professional development program at Oregon State University that culminates in an English for speakers of other languages endorsement and/or a dual language specialization. TEAMS is partially funded through an Office of English Language Acquisition National Professional Development…

Does student-teacher match quality exist? Prior work has documented large disparities in teachers' impacts across student types but has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I propose a disparate value-added model and derive a novel measure of teacher quality--revealed comparative advantage--that…

This paper compares and contrasts two required building level school violence measures under NCLB, arrests and incidents of well-defined school misconduct acts, across 20 years of Pennsylvania's approximately 3,000 public school buildings. Generally, both arrests for school violence and incidents of school violence are rare events. Over 20 years,…