In the 2024 legislative session, the Tennessee General Assembly passed Chapter 551 of the Public Acts of 2024 (PC 551), the Mathematics Supports Act (the Act), codified at Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 49-1-233 -- 49-1-234. The Act indicates the General Assembly's commitment to strong mathematics instruction in Tennessee to prepare students for postsecondary…

A new design-based theory has recently been developed to estimate impacts for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and basic quasi-experimental designs (QEDs) for a wide range of designs used in social policy research (Imbens & Rubin, 2015; Schochet, 2016). These methods use the potential outcomes framework and known features of study designs…

A valuable extension of the single-rating regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a multiple-rating RDD (MRRDD). To date, four main methods have been used to estimate average treatment effects at the multiple treatment frontiers of an MRRDD: the "surface" method, the "frontier" method, the "binding-score" method, and…

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…

Evaluators of education interventions are increasingly designing studies to detect impacts much smaller than the 0.20 standard deviations that Cohen (1988) characterized as "small." While the need to detect smaller impacts is based on compelling arguments that such impacts are substantively meaningful, the drive to detect smaller impacts…

This NCEE Technical Methods Paper compares the estimated impacts of an educational intervention using experimental and regression discontinuity (RD) study designs. The analysis used data from two large-scale randomized controlled trials--the Education Technology Evaluation and the Teach for America Study--to provide evidence on the performance of…

Background: For a majority of the world's children, despite substantial increases in primary school enrollment, academic learning is neither occurring at expected rates nor supplying the basic foundational skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century. The significant lag in academic achievement tells us that simply making formal education…

In 2017-2018, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) launched Achieve 180, a program centered upon a comprehensive action plan to increase student achievement at 45 schools, including the 27 schools that received the Texas Education Agency Campus Accountability rating of "Improvement Required" (IR) in 2016-2017 and 18 former IR…

In 2017-2018, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) launched Achieve 180, a program centered upon a comprehensive action plan to increase student achievement at 45 schools, including the 27 schools that received the Texas Education Agency Campus Accountability rating of "Improvement Required" (IR) in 2016-2017 and 18 former IR…

As colleges increasingly understand the importance of intentionally engaging students, the field must turn to the game-changing challenge: "bringing high-impact practices to scale as part of a concerted effort to increase college completion rates." In an era of growing demand, shrinking budgets, and greater accountability, meeting this…

The 19th annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is organized around a model which views educational results as products of three sets of factors: the context and environment in which the education is provided, student characteristics, and school programs and services. Section 1, on…

Background: This is the fourth formal report describing the efficacy of the full-day, every day kindergarten program in the St. James School Division which was initiated in one school located in an economically-disadvantaged neighborhood in the 1997-1998 school year. The success of this undertaking led to the extension of the program in 1998-1999,…

The 21st annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is divided into four sections organized around a model that views educational results as products of three sets of factors: the context and environment in which the education is provided, student characteristics, and school programs…