This study investigated the efficacy of the Beyond Rubrics Toolkit (BRT) as an embedded assessment instrument within makerspaces. Conducted as a pilot study at two Boys & Girls Club sites during afterschool programming, the research aimed to address the following research questions: (1) What skills are Youth Development Professionals teaching…

This paper deals with a problem of digital competence acquisition and certification. In order to overcome the problem of still inadequate number of digitally competent students and the tools that merely focus on skills acquisition, this paper proposes the CRISS platform which is a unique cloud-based digital learning solution, based on the most…

Denver Public Schools' Professional Learning Center was still relatively new when it decided to tackle a problem of practice that has vexed systems and departments across the country: How to measure the impact of professional learning. To do so, the Professional Learning Center created a new comprehensive measurement approach--one that would…

Students, teachers, and school leaders are seeking flexibility and supports to enable powerful, personalized learning experiences both inside and outside of the traditional classroom. In personalized learning, instruction is tailored to each student's strengths, needs, and interests--including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when,…

The purpose of this study was to describe the measures used to evaluate principals in New Jersey in the first (pilot) year of the new principal evaluation system and examine three of the statistical properties of the measures: their variation among principals, their year-to-year stability, and the associations between these measures and the…

This report represents the work of New Jersey's Evaluation Pilot Advisory Committee (EPAC) from 2011-2013. The EPAC Interim Report, published in February 2013, summarized the establishment of the EPAC, key lessons learned from the 2011-12 teacher evaluation pilot, and recommendations for statewide roll-out of a more effective educator evaluation…

New Jersey is preparing to implement a statewide educator evaluation system in the 2013-14 school year. As part of this process, an Evaluation Pilot Advisory Committee (EPAC) was convened in September 2011. The EPAC consisted of 22 appointed members from various stakeholder groups. Its charge was to make recommendations to the New Jersey…

Beginning in 2002, The Chicago Community Trust embarked on an ambitious grant- making strategy to improve education outcomes primarily in the city of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Known as The Education Initiative, this effort focused on three priority grant areas: literacy, professional development, and alternative models of schools. In…

The Department of Education (Education) created Race to The Top (RTT) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to provide incentives for states to reform K-12 education in areas such as improving the lowest performing schools and developing effective teachers and leaders. In 2010, Education awarded 12 states nearly $4 billion in…

An educational intervention's effectiveness is judged by whether it produces positive outcomes for students, with the randomized controlled trial (CRT) as a valuable tool for determining intervention effects. However, the intervention-as-implemented in an experiment frequently differs from the intervention-as-designed, making it unclear whether…

In the current climate of high stakes testing and tough love rhetoric, many educational stakeholders have become increasingly reliant on standardized test scores to determine whether or not individual students, teachers, and schools--and even entire districts and states--are successful. In contrast to the black and white picture that test-driven…

Researchers have raised a number of questions about whether student achievement data can be used fairly or accurately for purposes of teacher evaluation. Others have noted that achievement data alone cannot provide teachers with the information they need to improve their practice. Recognizing these limitations, the federal government and many…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate student understanding and application of computational thinking patterns to novel situations. Over 500 students, who had just designed and programmed a Frogger-style game using the AgentSheets platform, responded to a newly developed video-prompt survey instrument administered in the Fall 2010 semester.…

This policy brief examines standards-based approaches that hold promise for shaping a common vision of skilled teaching commensurate with the national goal of preparing all students for college and careers. Numerous studies confirm that teachers are the most significant school-based factor in improving student achievement, particularly for the…

This report summarizes research findings and implementation practices for teacher and principal value-added models (VAMs), as a first step in the Team Pennsylvania Foundation's (Team PA) pilot project to inform the development of a full, statewide model evaluation system. We have selected 21 studies that represent key issues and findings in the…