The synthetic control method (SCM) is a popular approach for estimating the impact of a treatment on a single unit with panel data. Two challenges arise with higher frequency data (e.g., monthly versus yearly): (1) achieving excellent pre-treatment fit is typically more challenging; and (2) overfitting to noise is more likely. Aggregating data…

The gold-standard for evaluating the effect of an educational intervention on student outcomes is running a randomized controlled trial (RCT). However, RCTs may often be small due to logistical considerations, and resulting treatment effect estimates may lack precision. Recent methods improve experimental precision by incorporating information…

Third Mission (TM) drives universities to a purpose beyond their traditional role, especially in local socioeconomic and innovation ecosystems. To investigate the issue, we consider an exploratory and comparative study of two different governance systems of public universities (Southeast Brazil-region 1 and Texas-US-region 2). The comparison took…

Accurate and efficient universal screening is a foundational component of multi-tiered systems of support for reading. By the time students reach middle school, educators often have extant data available to inform screening decisions. Therefore, the decision to collect additional data to inform screening should be considered carefully. The…

Historically, community colleges have promoted social mobility by providing access to higher education, especially for underrepresented groups. Because of their geographic availability, open admissions policy, and low cost, these colleges have expanded educational opportunity to millions of Americans, young and old. Recently, however, the emphasis…

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)-State Data Exchange is a cooperative effort of the SREB and the statewide higher education governing and coordinating boards in the South. Founded in 1969-1970, it is one of the nation's oldest, most comprehensive sources of comparative data on public higher education. The Data Exchange annually…

The Education Equality Index (EEI), created through a unique collaboration of GreatSchools and Education Cities, is a nationally comparative measure that looks at how well students from low-income families are achieving in schools, cities, and states across the country and The EEI taps GreatSchools' national school information database and…

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)-State Data Exchange is a one-of-a-kind regional program with 23 statewide higher education governing and coordinating board partners. The Data Exchange annually collects, compiles, and publishes: (1) the most current and detailed comparative statistics on postsecondary education in the 16 SREB states;…

The combination of two technological tools, Microsoft Excel and ArcGIS, has proved powerful in organizing, categorizing, and expressing data visually in meaningful ways. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has found its way into historical research due to its interdisciplinary nature and usefulness. The goal of this paper is not to…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which differences were present in reading, mathematics, and both subjects college-readiness for English Language Learners who were enrolled in Texas high schools. In the first investigation, the extent to which English Language Learner boys differ in their…

Central to the issues of assistive technology utilization and competency is the need to understand how in-service and preservice teachers feel about their knowledge and skill levels. In order to identify teachers of students with visual impairments' perceptions of their mastery of assistive technology devices and services, two studies were…

Definitions of rurality in education research are inconsistent, making generalization across studies difficult at best. We review published research in rural education between 2005 and 2015 (n = 17) and characterize the way each defined rural. A common technique for classifying rural schools is the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)…

The Invaders of Texas program is a successful citizen science program in which volunteers survey and monitor invasive plants throughout Texas. Invasive plants are being introduced at alarming rates, and our limited knowledge about their distribution is a major cause for concern. The Invaders of Texas program trains citizen scientists to detect the…

Concerns about the equitable distribution of school funding within and across school districts have led to new federal data collections on school-level expenditures. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required states to collect and report, for the first time, school-level data on both personnel and non-personnel expenditures…

The TALPS study aims to build on the existing research base to develop promising methodologies to identify chronically low-performing and turnaround schools, as well as to identify promising strategies for turning around chronically low-performing schools. By looking specifically at schools identified as turnaround, in comparison to nonturnaround…