Departmentalized instruction, in which teachers specialize in one or more core subjects and instruct multiple groups of students in a day, has become increasingly prominent in elementary schools. Using 8 years of data from Massachusetts and a difference-in-differences design, we estimate the effects of departmentalization on student achievement.…

Beginning with the 2020-21 school year, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education began collecting literacy screening assessment data from schools and districts participating in certain state grants in order to analyze patterns of performance to inform improvement efforts. These assessments, which were selected from a list…

This qualitative study examines elementary teachers' strategies for supporting trans and/or gender-expansive elementary students. The findings come from observations and interviews with a purposive sample of 31 teachers from five elementary schools with principals whom parents characterized as supporting their transgender and/or gender-expansive…

Demetrius Fuller developed the HOMies, eight characters who represent eight habits of mind for learners, while he was an art teacher at a Massachusetts elementary school. When students began talking about the HOMies outside their art class, the initiative spread across the school. Linda Nathan, Demetrius Fuller, and Nate Meyers describe the HOMies…

Like many states, Massachusetts has intensified efforts in recent years to improve literacy outcomes, particularly in the early grades. Initiatives have focused on providing guidance and resources for implementing changes in curriculum, instruction, and additional screening and support for struggling students. In September 2022, the Board of…

This research addressed the problem of achievement gaps among elementary schools in Massachusetts. The purpose of this quantitative causal comparative study was to determine what effect, if any, funding had on elementary school accountability classification, student academic achievement, and per pupil expenditure rates. Equity theory indicated…

The National Center on Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) provides professional development and technical assistance to more than 27,000 schools nationwide (OSEP Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, 2021). Although much has been documented on the impact of Tier I PBIS implementation with…

The current brief provides an overview of the 2021-2022 school year student-to-school psychologist ratio for every United States territory, using the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) counts of school psychologists. In addition to this, data are presented on the percentage change in student-to-school psychologist ratio from the…

Through a social constructivist lens, this study looked at how paraprofessionals understand mathematics instructional content and associated pedagogical skills and explore an organization's current involvement of support staff in schools' mathematical classrooms. The setting for this bounded case study was two elementary schools contained in one…

Anecdotal evidence points to the importance of school principals, but the limited existing research has neither provided consistent results nor indicated any set of essential characteristics of effective principals. This paper exploits extensive student-level panel data across six states to investigate both variations in principal performance and…

The Massachusetts Innovation Schools initiative authorized educators to operate with increased autonomy and flexibility. This descriptive case study examines the early experiences of teachers in one innovation school. We explore the innovations teachers leveraged to build capacity, with particular attention to how they enacted teacher leadership…

For social and emotional learning (SEL) initiatives to have the greatest positive impact on students, they must be implemented schoolwide. There is an urgent need for schools to shift away from traditional SEL frameworks toward transformative SEL (TSEL). TSEL program implementation cannot be done in isolation; rather, it must be fueled by a shared…

Plausible competing developmental models show similar or identical structural equation modeling model fit indices, despite making very different causal predictions. One way to help address this problem is incorporating outside information into selecting among models. This study attempted to select among developmental models of children's early…

Background: The financial costs and human resource requirements at the school and district level to implement a SARS-CoV-2 screening program are not well known. Methods: A consortium of Massachusetts public K-12 schools was formed to implement and evaluate a range of SARS-CoV-2 screening approaches. Participating districts were surveyed weekly…

Arts integration has been a mixed blessing, with both the potential for developing deeper understandings amid concerns that it diminishes the integrity and authenticity of learning in the arts. This article describes concept-based arts integration as a model of arts integration where curriculum is designed around shared concepts that connect…