As we settled into a new reality with COVID-19, there were calls for educators to use the crisis as a time to initiate changes desperately needed in education (Zhao & Watterston, 2021). Highlighting an elementary school as a case study (Hungerford-Kresser et al., 2022), we now reflect on what we learned during the early stages of the pandemic,…

Sometimes we hear music (when we play it or hear it, whether live or recorded) and that experience is felt as a singular event. In those moments we find ourselves in an existential situation that, because it is singular (rare, unique, unintended), reveals the formative power of an aesthetic experience of listening to music, what we might call…

Various forms of networks in education have been proposed by scholars, policymakers, and educational administrators as a strategy for school improvement. However, there are few empirical studies on the effect of interschool networks. We analyzed data from 76 elementary schools in a Midwestern state to examine the association between interschool…

Cross-age tutoring is an educational model where an older tutor is paired with a younger tutee, valued for its economic advantages and capacity to engage participants. This model leads to improvements in both academic performance and behavior, as evidenced by Shenderovich et al. ("International Journal of Educational Research, 76,"…

We consider estimating the effect of a treatment on a given outcome measured on subjects tested both before and after treatment assignment in observational studies. A vast literature compares the competing approaches of modelling the post-test score conditionally on the pre-test score versus modelling the difference, namely, the gain score. Our…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant disruption in schooling worldwide. Global test score data is used to estimate learning losses by modeling the effect of school closures on achievement by predicting the deviation of the most recent results from a linear trend using data from all rounds of PISA. Mathematics scores declined an average of…

The ability to extract structural information from a drawing of a molecule is key to being successful in organic chemistry. One source of difficulty for novices in interpreting structures is that hydrogens bound to carbon are represented implicitly in the often-used line-angle structures. Other representations that explicitly show hydrogens, such…

Background: Concept maps are a valid assessment tool to explore student understanding of diverse topics. Many types of academic programs have integrated concept mapping into their courses, resulting in various activities and scoring methods to understand student perceptions. Purpose: Few prior reviews of concept mapping have addressed their use…

Well-designed academic interventions can give students the targeted support they need to build confidence, improve specific skills, and reach their full academic potential. This Spotlight will help you measure the connection between tutoring, attendance, and better test scores; identify effective practices for tutoring; learn how to simultaneously…

After millions of American schoolchildren fell behind during the COVID-19 pandemic, some states and school districts are looking at year-round school calendars as a way to recoup lost learning. Typically, year-round calendars don't increase learning time but rather spread school days more equally across 12 months, with a shorter summer vacation…

A main goal of this paper is to complicate "learning loss" as the only, or even the main, thing schools should be concerned about as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. While schools have a responsibility to make sure students who are enrolled in school are learning, this cannot come at the cost of ignoring the other substantial…

Numerous headlines have proclaimed just how far behind students have fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic first shuttered schools in March 2020. Many of these headlines report test score changes in "months (or years) of learning" from recent studies. Despite the accessibility (and therefore popularity) of the "months of learning"…

Aggregate national test score data have shown that student learning declined from SY19 to SY21, and that recovery began occurring from SY21 to SY22. To further the understanding of how districts in Illinois' performances have changed since the onset of the pandemic, the authors explored variation in districts' change in standardized test scores…

This report investigates the link between different 5 percentage point bandings of attendance and attainment for pupils at the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) and Key Stage 4 (KS4) in state-funded mainstream schools in 2022/23. Absence from school is not the only factor that is likely to affect a pupil's level of attainment. There are a range of pupil,…

Amidst the pandemic phase, students have not learned what they were supposed to learn in normal classroom days while many forgot the lessons taught in pre-pandemic time. As a result of the extended and unprecedented shutdown of schools, educational institutes globally happen to be in a state of unfortunate extremity with prodigious dissipation in…