Five facts about standardized tests should cause educators to rethink their use in decision-making. Standardized tests used for state and federal accountability purposes in PreK--12 public education are not diagnostic. The test results are impacted by family income and student background knowledge. The composition of the tests disadvantage…

During the 2020-21 school year, Black students were less likely to learn in person than white students. We examine whether this difference persisted as the pandemic progressed. We find that the rate of in-person learning increased in 2021-22 but remained lower for Black students compared to white students. While several factors helped explain…

Teachers' social and emotional learning (SEL) beliefs can impact SEL implementation efforts and consistency in primary and secondary schools. The diffusion of innovations theory is a suitable framework for understanding problems with SEL implementation and diffusion within educational organizations and among teachers over time. The purpose of this…

We consider the problem of assessing the changing performance levels of individual students as they go through online courses. This student performance modeling problem is a critical step for building adaptive online teaching systems. Specifically, we conduct a study of how to utilize various types and large amounts of log data from earlier…

This study examined opportunities and barriers for implementing evidence-based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs in Prairie Canadian Schools. Educators from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta completed an online survey on SEL feasibility and reported on five feasibility domains: (1) attitudes about SEL, (2) knowledge about SEL, (3) job…

The primary purpose of this study is to shed light on the direct correlation found between team learning skills and teachers' moral commitment and to use moral commitment as a tool to reveal the indirect effect of these team learning skills on teachers' career commitment. Keeping this purpose in mind, three different scales (the Learning School…

The school closures during the COVID-19 outbreak triggered a shift towards digital learning. Whilst this is a major challenge for mainstream education, the implementation of digital learning poses an even bigger challenge for special education teachers, as they are confronted with different learning requirements which might hinder digital learning…

Many K-12 brick-and-mortar public schools now grant students the option of taking some of their courses online. Yet, a scant academic literature probes where online course choice exists and why it is utilized. We partnered with a market research firm to solicit 450 responses from a nationally representative group of American parents of public…

In March of 2020, in response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of Illinois mandated the transition to remote instruction for all schools. Although schools had the option to resume in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year (SY21), the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) acknowledged that in-person instruction may not…

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 was marked by a transition to remote learning in Illinois schools and nationwide. The following school year, schools and families faced difficult decisions about how and when to return to in-person learning. School leaders, parents and caregivers, and students considered how to balance…

For over two years, schools, teachers, students, and families across Illinois have worked to adapt instruction and learning under the ever-changing conditions wrought by COVID-19. This report, the third and final in the Learning During the Pandemic in Illinois series, investigates how much time students spent learning in-person and/or remotely…

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 influenced all aspects of school life. Teaching and learning moved only online, with different software solutions emerging for teachers to make the most of them. These educational platforms provided more than just a traditional teaching which is focused on the transmission and access to information.…

While spring of 2020 introduced virtual instruction to all public schools, virtual schooling had already been growing in most states. We focus on pre-COVID-19 changes to fulltime virtual school enrollment in public schools, and provide evidence on the relationship between virtual school enrollment, internet speed, community demographics, and…

Teacher absenteeism has high individual and societal costs and triggers a vicious cycle by increasing teacher absenteeism for the remaining teachers. Moreover, teachers' non-attendance disrupts the learning process and affects student motivation and achievement. Teacher absenteeism further exacerbates the increasing teacher shortage observed in…

Domains of motivation, learning and personality traits (MLP) have emerged as vital constructs in studies of academic performance. Although there are abundant studies on the relationships of the three aforementioned dimensions on performance, no systematic synthesis of the empirical literature has been done regarding how three determinants jointly…