Why, when so many educational interventions demonstrate positive impact in tightly controlled efficacy trials, are null results common in follow-up effectiveness trials? Using case studies from literacy, this article suggests that replication failure can surface hidden moderators--contextual differences between an efficacy and an effectiveness…

This paper uses examples from research conducted in preschools in Japan, China, and the United States to illustrate the features and virtues of return interviews with informants with whom ethnographers have long research engagements. Return interviews and long research engagements are powerful research strategies that help the ethnographers ask…

Like instruments used in afterschool programs to assess children's social and emotional growth or to evaluate staff members' performance, instruments used to evaluate program quality should be free from bias. Practitioners and researchers alike want to know that assessment instruments, whatever their type or intent, treat all people fairly and do…

This article presents detailed instructional plans for a two-day, high school-level lesson on wealth distribution in society. The terms "income" and "wealth" are defined and compared, and the significance of studying wealth is discussed. Resources for the lesson are identified, and a pedagogical mode is outlined in relation to…

This article tells the story of MetLife Foundation-NASSP Breakthrough Schools. The program's goals are to identify, recognize, and showcase the leadership and successful practices of middle level and high schools that serve large numbers of students living in poverty and that have high levels of student achievement or show evidence of dramatically…

This article describes a program for excellent students that views research as an inseparable part of its development, and utilizes research findings as a means to aid formulation and implementation of policy changes. Eight nationwide graduate follow-up studies have been conducted on the program. Their findings were studied comprehensively, and…

In 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) completed data collection for its third-grade follow-up study of Head Start, a federal preschool program designed to improve the kindergarten readiness of low-income children. Four years later, just before Christmas, the agency finally published the results of the congressionally mandated…

Because of the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS"), all of Emily Miller, Hedi Baxter Lauffer, and Paula Messina's students needed to learn the practice of scientific argumentation within the context of sense-making about core ideas in science. The goal, to meet the "NGSS," enabled them to simultaneously…

Since the 1999-2000 school year, TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP) has been implemented in hundreds of schools across the nation and demonstrated an ability to raise student achievement, improve the quality of instruction and increase the ability of high-need schools to recruit, retain and support effective teachers. The…

This fact sheet draws from surveys administered to a cohort of 416 participants in 7th grade in 2008, again when they were in 8th grade in 2009, and most recently as 10th graders in 2011 to look at patterns of participation in structured activities over time and whether male and female students differ in these patterns of participation. It also…

The passage of the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, which measures student achievement based on English and math scores, has pressured schools to cut the arts. A 2006 survey by the Center on Education Policy found that 44 percent of school districts had increased time for English and math while cutting time for other subjects. And a follow-up…

Novice teacher attrition has long been a concern among educators and policy makers who have responded with various types of induction and mentoring programs and increased efforts to recruit more teachers. Yet, these efforts have not created the stable work force needed to implement school reform efforts. The school staffing challenge is further…

During the past 10 years, Cornell University has made significant strides in recruiting underrepresented minorities and women in its faculty ranks, but a new internal study at the university is revealing that its success is a mixed bag. The number of minority faculty has grown about 52 percent, and the number of female faculty members has…

This article describes the current lives of the Chinese leaders of 1989. Wang Dan, an active organizer year before the demonstrations and quickly became a leader in the square, has completed a Ph.D. in Chinese history at Harvard University last year and is now on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. Wu'er Kaixi, who took a…

This article considers curriculum ownership, contestation and the relationship between curriculum and culture through the lens of the Exploring Masculinities (EM) programme. The programme was developed in the late 1990s to meet the social and personal needs of young men. As its dissemination was being planned, it became the subject of critical…