Even prior to the pandemic, educators sometimes faced challenges in their efforts to keep students engaged in schoolwork. Remote learning during the pandemic increased concerns about student engagement and motivation, especially given that this type of instruction was unfamiliar to many students and teachers, required access to reliable…

In fall 2022 and winter 2023, Education Forward DC and Venture Philanthropy Partners+Raise DC supported a cohort of Washington, D.C., public charter schools (PCS) in administering selected domains of the Panorama Social Emotional Learning (SEL) survey to provide educators with data on well-being for students in grades 3-12. The organizations…

Student engagement is a longstanding concern among educators. The issue became even more urgent in March of 2020, when U.S. schools shut down to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, forcing millions of American students and teachers to engage in remote learning for the very first time. Although some students thrived in the new environment,…

The National Literacy Trust's research during the first national lockdown in spring 2020 showed that more children and young people said that they enjoyed reading and more read more often during lockdown compared with before the pandemic. Children and young people's comments suggested that this was because they suddenly had time to (re)engage with…

COVID-19 changed the experiences of K-12 students and teachers in ways that are not yet well-documented. This report provides initial insights into teaching and learning during the pandemic from the perspectives of teachers and students at 31 public schools in three states. The analyses indicate that about two thirds of the teachers surveyed…

Numerous national and international studies have explored reading for enjoyment in connection to reading skill as well as to other reading variables, such as reading motivation and reading frequency. These studies tend to show that reading for enjoyment is an important predictor of reading skill, and is linked with how often children and young…

As is the case in most OECD countries, boys in Norway are more likely to have lower levels of academic achievement and attainment than girls. While this phenomenon is not recent, it has become increasingly pronounced in recent years and, as a result, is attracting considerable attention from policy-makers in many countries. This paper develops…

In response to the growing call to increase college completion rates, many campus officials have turned their attention to the "sophomore slump"--a term that broadly defines the somewhat-common and lackluster performance of a substantial portion of second-year college students. To examine this issue, this report looks beyond test scores…

To better understand the views of teachers and school-based administrators on student engagement and motivation, the Education Week Research Center invited users of edweek.org--"Education Week"'s flagship website--to participate in an online survey in April 2014. Surveys were received from 606 respondents, with 504 being deemed qualified…

More than ever, students need to engage with mathematics concepts, think quantitatively and analytically, and communicate using mathematics. All these skills are central to a young person's preparedness to tackle problems that arise at work and in life beyond the classroom. But the reality is that many students are not familiar with basic…

This annual report describes self-reported attitudes and motivations of today's first-year college students throughout the nation, based on survey responses from a sizable sample of freshmen attending college during the current academic year, 2011-2012. Among the highlights: (1) Compared to their female counterparts, many more incoming first-year…

This report explores the factors and conditions that could help more students succeed at school despite challenging socio-economic backgrounds. It does this by studying resilient students and what sets them apart from their less successful peers. Understanding how educational systems can support disadvantaged students and help them "beat the…

This 2015 Brown Center Report (BCR) represents the fourteenth edition of the series since the first issue was published in 2000. It includes three studies. Like all previous BCRs, the studies explore independent topics but share two characteristics: they are empirical and based on the best evidence available. The studies in this edition are on the…

This report examines traditional teacher preparation in classroom management, which is a struggle for many teachers, especially new ones. 122 teacher preparation programs--both elementary and secondary, graduate and undergraduate--were examined to review the full breadth of the professional sequence. The following conclusions are made as a result…

This annual report from Ruffalo Noel Levitz goes beyond the usual metrics of standardized test scores and high school transcripts to explore a wide range of non-cognitive attitudes and motivations that influence student retention and college completion rates. The report is based on student survey responses drawn from a sizable sample of incoming…