A quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) is a voluntary state assessment system that uses multidimensional data on early childhood education programs to rate program quality, support quality improvement efforts, and provide information to families about the quality of available early childhood education programs. QRISs have two components:…

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires all states to collect and report school-level expenditure information, state education agencies (SEAs) are considering whether to set statewide rules for local education agencies (LEAs) around how to assign expenditures. Specifically, many states are wondering whether they need to standardize a practice…

Studies about effective practice in Higher Education (HE), student retention, progression and attainment suggest that student engagement is a major factor in success. A sense of belonging to a community of students and academics is seen as key to creating effective engagement. Such studies have identified interventions that have proved successful…

Students with severe and persistent academic or behavioral challenges may benefit from data-based individualization (DBI). Starting with an evidence-based standard protocol and systematic progress monitoring, teachers can evaluate growth and implement individualized interventions to meet students' needs. Specifically, this article addresses the…

The 2015-16 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) is a survey of public schools and school districts in the United States. The CRDC measures student access to courses, programs, staff, and resources that impact education equity and opportunity for students. The CRDC has long provided critical information used by the Department of Education's Office…

In this research brief, the National School Boards Association's Center for Public Education looks at indicators of school board effectiveness. From this research, it is clear that school boards in high-achieving districts exhibit habits and characteristics that are markedly different from boards in low-achieving districts. In the most dramatic…

Statistical literacy is essential in everyone's personal lives as consumers, citizens, and professionals. To make informed life and professional decisions, students are required to read, understand, and interpret vast amounts of information, much of which is quantitative. To develop statistical literacy so students are able to make sense of…

The "NCTQ Teacher Prep Review" evaluates the quality of programs that provide preservice preparation of public school teachers. This appendix describes the scope, methodology, timeline, staff, and standards involved in the production of "Teacher Prep Review 2014." Data collection, validation, and analysis for the report are…

K-12 education resources are often allocated non-strategically, with schools spending time and money on activities that have little relationship to student outcomes. Most of these decisions take place within districts, rooted in the processes of setting schedules, staffing levels, and assignments, and creating final budgets. Local Education…

State licensure polices are meant to provide teacher preparation programs with direction about the skills teachers need to be qualified to teach, including skills to use data. This roadmap discusses the 10 key data use skills that states can include in a licensure policy with a quality focus on effective data use.

The 'Young People from a Public Care Background: Pathways to Education in Europe' project was funded by the European Commission under Framework Programme 7 and coordinated from the United Kingdom. It brought together a multidisciplinary team of social scientists from five European Union member states representing different welfare regime…

Despite their long trajectory in the social sciences, few systematic works analyze how often and for what purposes focus groups appear in published works. This study fills this gap by undertaking a meta-analysis of focus group use over the last 10 years. It makes several contributions to our understanding of when and why focus groups are used in…

The evidence base for school-based consultation practice and training is limited by a small number of studies, possibly due to unique challenges in researching consultation. For example, there are myriad variables to measure and idiosyncratic cultural and contextual factors to account for when investigating what works, for whom, and in what…

Although the literature on institutional diversity suggests that quality assurance practices could affect institutional diversity, there has been little empirical research on this relationship. This article seeks to shed some light on the possible connection between quality assurance practices and institutional diversity by examining the…

One of the challenges of science education is to integrate activities, content, and tools in a meaningful manner. One way to address this challenging goal is the transformation of authentic scientific practices into contexts for learning, in line with sociocultural activity theory. In this respect, authentic scientific practices are interpreted as…