Members of the Data Science Program at George Washington University (GWU) designed and implemented a tuition-free two-week summer camp at GWU for high-school students from the Washington Metro Area. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of the Chief Information Officer and his staff were our main partners in the project. The…

The recommendations in this brief create a framework for using data effectively to make instructional decisions. The availability of student-level data for educators has pushed forward the movement to strengthen the role of data to guide instruction and improve student learning. While improvements in technology and assessments, as well as recent…

State education data systems help policymakers use data to evaluate the impact of their efforts to improve education. By disaggregating the data -- that is, breaking it out by different student subgroups -- policymakers can ensure that their efforts address the needs of students who have been traditionally underserved in educational settings. Yet…

This report describes the findings from a new study of the teacher selection process in Washington, DC public schools. In 2009, the district created a centralized application process to streamline hiring by screening out less desirable candidates. Following the collection of standard information, applicants are asked to complete up to three…

The Integrated Leadership Development Initiative (ILDI) is a cross-agency partnership that focuses on collaboratively guiding and supporting leader development and improving conditions of leadership so that there are highly accomplished leaders in every district and school in California. In this brief, ILDI focuses on Principal Evaluations and…

Through extensive research, the Foundation has identified the most critical levers for success in the classroom -- high standards, high-quality feedback, and effective tools -- and worked with teachers to develop, test, and strengthen them. This report describes what we know about these factors, why they are important, and what we need to learn,…

Higher education is ripe for innovation. While emerging technological developments such as digital courseware and mobiles apps have made it easier than ever for people to engage with learning resources, significant issues of access and equity persist among students from low-income, minority, single-parent families, and other disadvantaged groups.…

Results from studies of observing responses have suggested that stimuli maintain observing owing to their special relationship to primary reinforcement (the conditioned- reinforcement hypothesis), and not because they predict the availability and nonavailability of reinforcement (the information hypothesis). The present article first reviews a…

Established in 2006 by New Leaders for New Schools[TM], the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) initiative rewards high-need urban schools showing significant gains in student achievement. In exchange, schools agree to share the practices helping to drive those gains, which they do through an in-depth study of practice, aided by the EPIC…

With a grant from the Council of the Great City Schools' Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship Program, the authors began a project designed to identify the roots of the dropout problem in the District of Columbia by identifying middle grades students' exhibiting behaviors associated with dropping out of high school. Their plan was to use DC…

The U.S. Constitution requires a national census once every 10 years. The census is a count of everyone (all ages, races, ethnic groups, both citizens and non-citizens) residing in the United States: in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.…

Faced with rising demand for information about early childhood programs, states need to find tools and strategies to monitor the progress of and to identify high-quality early childhood programs. In response, REL Mid-Atlantic convened a regional workgroup for state personnel who work with the systems containing early childhood data. The workgroup…

A number of U.S. cities, including five supported by Wallace, have been building new systems of high-quality out-of-school time programming citywide. But what should supporters do to ensure that these young systems endure, during the immediate economic crisis and for the long term? This report on a recent Wallace-sponsored conference that gathered…

What happens when teams from 57 cities building afterschool systems gather to discuss two key system responsibilities--improving afterschool programs and using data for informed decision-making? Lots of rich discussion. This report covers a national afterschool conference held in February 2013. It details what mayors, program providers, system…

In Fall 2006, a faculty member in George Washington University's University Writing 20 (UW20) program began incorporating service learning into her theme-based first-year writing course. Along with her librarian partner, they linked two research assignments to the service work of the students. An end-of-semester survey was administrated over three…