This study examines the incentive effects of North Carolina's practice of awarding performance bonuses on test score achievement on the state tests. Bonuses were awarded based solely on whether a school exceeds a threshold on a continuous performance metric. The study uses a sharp regression discontinuity design, an approach with strong internal…

The authors add to and extend the emerging evidence base of the effects of public preschool programs on child school readiness. Using a quasi-experimental, Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, they estimate the impacts of a universal preschool program on children's early numeracy, language, literacy, and executive function skills, both for the…

Out-of-school time (OST) programs focused on older youth--specifically, youth in middle and high school--can help participants successfully navigate their adolescence and learn new skills well into their teens. OST programs can also help prepare older youth for a variety of new roles that they will assume as they enter college and the workforce.…

As rural communities experience rapid economic, demographic, and political change, program interventions that focus on the development of community leadership capacity could be valuable. Community leadership development programs have been deployed in rural U.S. communities for the past 30 years by university extension units, chambers of commerce,…

The development of telerobotic systems has evolved from Single Operator Single Robot (SOSR) systems to Multiple Operator Multiple Robot (MOMR) systems. The relationship between human operators and robots follows the master-slave control architecture and the requests for controlling robot actuation are completely generated by human operators. …

In this essay, the authors accomplish three tasks: (1) identify common limitations of programs designed to increase the success rates of Latina/o college students, (2) describe the common characteristics of programs that exhibit effective practice, and (3) provide a framework to guide colleges and universities in designing effective program…

In this study, the authors examined the effects of a systematic functional assessment-based intervention (FABI) to identify the function of a third-grade student's off-task behavior and create a plan to increase academic engaged time (AET). The FABI was designed and implemented in an urban elementary school with a comprehensive, integrated,…

Most boys and girls interact differently with educational software and have different preferences for the design of educational software. The question is whether the usage of educational software has the same consequences for both genders. This paper investigates the characteristics of drill-and-practice programmes or drills that are efficient for…

Programs linking college aid to academic achievement could work either by lowering the cost of college or by inducing additional student effort. I examine the PROMISE program in West Virginia, which offers free tuition to students who maintain a minimum GPA and course load. Using administrative data, I exploit discontinuities in the eligibility…

This paper synthesis's three theoretical perspectives, including sociocultural theory, distributed cognition, and situated cognition, into a framework to guide the design and assessment of Web 2.0 practices in higher education. In addition, this paper presents a case study of Web 2.0 practices. Thirty-seven online graduate students participated in…

In this study, engineers and educators worked together to adapt and apply the ecological footprint (EF) methodology to an early learning centre in Brisbane, Australia. Results were analysed to determine how environmental impact can be reduced at the study site and more generally across early childhood settings. It was found that food, transport…

Background: In program evaluation interventions are usually examined for global effects but not always for differential effects. The reasoning behind the focus on global effects is that most of the concepts applied in data analyses, and most of the hypotheses being assessed, are variable-oriented. Consequently, existing differential effects will…

This study investigated whether active learning within computer-based training courses can be measured and whether it serves as a predictor of learner-perceived course quality. A major corporation participated in this research, providing access to internal employee training courses, training representatives, and historical course evaluation data.…

The semantic web brings a new opportunity for efficient information organization and search. To meet the special requirements of the educational field, this paper proposes an intelligent search engine enabled by educational semantic support service, where three kinds of searches are integrated into Educational Information Intelligent Search (EIIS)…

Ever so slowly, the United States is taking a harder look at how its teacher preparation schools are improving the quality of the teachers they produce. The signs are everywhere--from proposed federal action to state legislatures and school boards passing new oversight laws and regulations, to a newly marshaled push for stronger accreditation by…