The purpose of this replication study was to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development in vocabulary on first-grade teachers' knowledge of vocabulary instruction and observed teaching practice, and on students' vocabulary knowledge. Sixty-two schools from 16 districts in four states were randomly assigned to…

Contemporary state math standards emphasize that students must demonstrate an understanding of the mathematical ideas underlying the computations that have typically been the core of the elementary school math curriculum. The standards have put an increased emphasis on the study of fractions in upper elementary grades, which are the years during…

Replication studies are extremely rare in education. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a scale-up replication of Fuchs et al., which in a sample of 139 found a statistically significant positive impact for Number Rockets, a small-group intervention for at-risk first graders that focused on building understanding of number operations. The…

The main purposes of this study were to test the effects of teaching at-risk 4th graders to provide explanations for their mathematics work and examine whether those effects occur by compensating for limitations in cognitive processes. We randomly assigned 212 children to 3 conditions: a control group and 2 variants of a multi-component fraction…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an early numeracy preventative Tier 2 intervention on the mathematics performance of first-grade students with mathematics difficulties. Researchers used a pretest-posttest control group design with randomized assignment of 139 students to the Tier 2 treatment condition and 65 students to…

The ESEA Blueprint for Reform states that teachers need "effective, ongoing, job-embedded, professional development that is targeted to student and school needs… [and] aligned with evidence of improvements in student learning." Unfortunately, the professional development approaches advocated, though sensible and compelling in theory,…