As the transition point between middle school and high school, ninth grade can either set a student up for long-term success or diminish a student's likelihood of graduating high school altogether. Interventions that can help educators better meet the needs of students during this critical juncture represent powerful levers for driving school…

Approximately 450 community colleges nationally are part of formal statewide or national initiatives to implement guided pathways reforms to improve student success, and many other colleges are implementing guided pathways practices on their own. Because guided pathways is a whole-college reform--and because it takes several years to fully…

Professional learning evaluators struggle to balance the pursuit of rigorous outcomes with the time and money that some effective measures entail. While many evaluations rely on surveys for their ease of administration and application, little research has explored how surveys can measure multiple constructs beyond participant satisfaction as part…

Volunteer science programs are designed to increase public understanding and appreciation of science by creating opportunities for the public to engage in science. This research assesses the impact of Map of Life-Denali on its volunteers. This program calls on park visitors to record wildlife observations while they visit Denali National Park and…

Like an ecosystem, internationalization has interdependent elements. This case study focuses on one component, faculty preparation and development, which impacts other components such as student learning outcomes. Assessment of short-term study abroad student learning outcomes is a complex process involving faculty development, program design, and…

Scholarship on the role of professional development opportunities for undergraduate students has highlighted the growing importance of internship programs. Different designs of internship programs have emerged as their numbers proliferate. Internship programs vary on key dimensions including integration of academic content, development of…

This paper explores students' perceived value of industry site visits during an engineering study abroad program. In this multi-method study, we collected data from students' (n = 54) reflective activities following each of two site visits and from the end of program evaluation administered by the Student Abroad Office (SAO). Using Kember et al.'s…

This report presents findings from the annual evaluation of the MacPhail Center for Music Online School Partnerships and Sing Play Learn programs. Results are reported in aggregate, across all schools that participated in the evaluation this year. The MacPhail Center for Music Online School Partnerships program aims to increase access to…

The responsibility of a teacher preparation program (TPP) goes beyond teaching future educators the knowledge and skills of the profession. It needs to provide experiences that help them succeed in the real classroom settings (GarzaRodriguez, 2019). However, there is evidence that disconnection between what is taught in TPPs and what is needed in…

Bet on Baltimore is a summer youth development program with a focus on creativity, making, and entrepreneurship created by Dent Education in 2017 and designed for Baltimore City public high school students. The goals are to engage high school students in Baltimore in meaningful work, leadership, and personal development activities and, according…

In this article, we use a two-dimensional assessment to examine the experimental impacts of a mathematics learning trajectory-oriented formative assessment program on student strategies for problems involving multiplication and division. Working from the theory that the development of students' multiplicative reasoning involves improvements in…

Higher education insiders trumpet the use of results for improvement as the most important part of the assessment cycle. Yet, at the same time, we acknowledge the rarity of improvement, especially at a program level. What are some reasons the most important phase of assessment occurs so infrequently? To seek answers, we investigated the "Use…

This report represents the final results of an evaluation of Project EQuIPD--Engaging Quality Instruction through Professional Development. The project provided two years of intensive professional development to help teachers learn to think more strategically about how to improve student outcomes using technology-based inquiry instruction. The…

This study describes the implementation and findings from a consultation process designed to enhance the professional development (PD) offered to teachers working in Virginia's state-funded preschool program. A PD Rubric was developed to translate research on effective PD (i.e., PD practices linked to positive changes in teacher practice and/or…

A strong emphasis has been placed on social-emotional learning (SEL) during the preschool years; however, there is a dearth of research into the drivers of program success in this setting. This study examined the effectiveness of a formal, teacher-led social-emotional learning program, COPE-Resilience, on the development of 4 to 5-year-old…