Few elementary students on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) are scoring at grade level or higher on the ACT Aspire reading assessment. To better understand factors associated with the reading proficiency of CNMI grade 3 students, stakeholders there asked the Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific to examine the demographic…

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, causing one of the largest disruptions to schooling in history. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented challenges for education research and large-scale assessments of student populations. Both schools and researchers were forced to modify…

The purpose of this study was to compare student growth of SCSD-7 students on the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) reading assessment to otherwise similar students who did not use Istation. This study followed two cohorts of elementary school students over three years (2016-17 through 2018-19) to assess the effect of Istation on reading…

Reading Horizons partnered with LearnPlatform by Instructure to investigate the relationship between teacher implementation of Reading Horizons Discovery (RHD) and student literacy outcomes. The study involved 83 educators and 1,242 students across seven elementary schools in North Carolina during the 2022-23 school year. Researchers used mCLASS…

The engage2learn approach to educator support provides an in-person and virtual coaching system that builds capacity and engagement in public schools. Engage2learn hired LXD Research to conduct an independent evaluation and analysis of NWEA Math and Reading data collected during the 2021-2022 school year. The goal was to measure how engage2learn…

In the spring of 2016 and 2017, a sample of juniors across all Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) high schools was administered a survey of financial literacy concepts as part of the College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA). The district administered this survey as education stakeholders have become increasingly interested in--and…

Rising inequality in the United States has raised concerns about potentially widening gaps in educational achievement by socio-economic status (SES). Using assessments from LTT-NAEP [Long-Term Trend assessment administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress], Main-NAEP, TIMSS [Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study],…

Competency-based education has received growing attention in recent years as a way to address preK-12 learning goals. In competency-based education, students are promoted to the next course of study or grade level in each subject area after demonstrating mastery of identified learning targets aligned to standards. Westminster Public Schools in…

This report compared the academic achievement of prekindergarten students who were enrolled in Houston Independent School District (HISD) early childhood centers (ECC) during the 2015-2016 school year to their peers who attended school-based programs. Academic achievement was measured on the HISD CIRCLE English and Spanish language, literacy, and…

This evaluation compared mean scores and proficiency levels on the 2016--2017 CIRCLE English and Spanish language, literacy, and mathematics assessments between students enrolled in Early Childhood Centers (EECs) with their School-based Program (SBP) peers. The evaluation helped to determine whether there were observable differences in academic…

Aware of the challenges set before the Houston Independent school District by rapid growth in the numbers of English learner students, and a critical shortage of teachers with bilingual certification for more than a decade, members of Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest's English Learners Research Alliance sought information that districts…

This report highlights several trends in Oregon that show the correlation between chronic absenteeism and various academic outcomes. Oregon student patterns follow the national trend in that students with better attendance have better outcomes. Fifth-grade chronic absenteeism is a moderately strong predictor of chronic absenteeism in subsequent…

Educator performance evaluation systems are a potential tool for improving student achievement by increasing the effectiveness of the educator workforce. For example, recent research suggests that giving more frequent, specific feedback on classroom practice may lead to improvements in teacher performance and student achievement. This report is…

Programme for International Student Assessment data from 29 countries was used to measure immigrant school gaps (differences in scores between immigrants and natives) in relation to various potentially correlated factors. Results show that negative gaps are concentrated in the European Union; in the South, they are mainly correlated with school…

The Council of the European Union has set the goal of reducing low achievement in reading, mathematics and science among 15-year-olds to less than 15 % by 2020. How are European countries going to achieve this? One of the key elements in the learning process is the instruction time available to students. In fact, not only the quality of…