Predicting incoming enrollment is an ongoing concern for the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and similar districts with school choice systems, substantial student mobility, or both. Inaccurate predictions can disrupt learning as districts adjust to enrollment fluctuations by reshuffling teachers and students well into the fall semester. This…

In this article, the author talks about program evaluation, a strategy commonly used by instructional leaders that can help school business officials improve their budget process. As districts struggle to develop budgets in these challenging economic times, school business officials might consider turning to program evaluation for help. Program…

The regulations and guidelines issued by the Office of Education and state education agencies imply that local districts must provide "something extra" with ESEA Title I funds. In many schools, other compensatory education programs also compete for the time of Title I eligible students. In an attempt to determine what the something extra…

Twelve years ago Blatchford and Mortimore's authoritative review of class size research appeared in this journal. They concluded that a major problem with class size research was the lack of detailed studies of complex classroom processes that might mediate class size effects on pupils' learning. This article reviews two UK class size reviews and…

Propensity score analysis is one statistical technique that can be applied to observational data to mimic randomization and thus can be used to estimate causal effects in studies in which the researchers have not applied randomization. In this article the authors (a) describe propensity score methodology and (b) demonstrate its application using…