An increasing number of parents are opting-out their children from high-stakes. Accountability systems in education have used students' test scores to measure student learning, teacher effectiveness, and school district performance. Students who are opted-out of high-stakes tests are not being evaluated by the state tests, making their level of…

The PD program evaluated in this study is designed to address the problem of low student achievement in topics in rational numbers. The study focuses on seventh grade, the culminating year for teaching those topics. The study randomly assigned 77 mid- and high-poverty schools from 12 districts to treatment and control conditions and collected…

This paper will describe results concerning the impact of the PD on the three primary study outcomes: teacher knowledge of rational number topics, teacher instructional practices, and student achievement in rational number topics. All analyses are completed. However, the results cannot be shared at this time because the report is currently under…

Implication is that Campbell's Design can be a useful technique for investigators. (Authors)

This paper reports an evaluation of a performance contract in reading with 2,500 seventh-grade students. Seventy-five percent of the students were to increase their reading speed five times over their beginning level with ten percent more comprehension after three months of instruction. Results indicated that only thirteen percent of the students…

The general goal of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program is to provide citizens and educators with information regarding the quality and progress of the State's system of public education. The State Board of Education recently approved four objectives of the educational assessment effort which will move the program toward this general goal…

The aims of the report are threefold: (1) to assess the general level of social studies learning of seventh grade students in California public schools; (2) to provide a comparison of the general level of social studies learning to those of other curriculum areas; and (3) to provide a comparison of the relative level of social studies learning by…

To investigate the assertion that there is a tendency for teachers to emphasize skills already mastered by their students, data were collected on 488 seventh grade mathematics students in three junior high schools. Of these, 285 were assigned to experimental classes taking the curriculum under development and 203 were assigned to comparison…

This document describes in depth a reading and writing project implemented at the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade levels at a public school in Portland, Oregon. The objectives of the Title I project--to improve students' reading and writing skills and to evaluate that improvement--are outlined, and each component of the program is described in…

Designed to observe changes in biracial student behavior brought about by Project BACSTOP (a series of structured experiences in a variety of wilderness settings meant to bring students of different races together in stressful adventure activities geared to promote interaction, communication, and cooperation), this evaluation studied five…

After two years of operation, Project BACSTOP (Better Acquisition of Cognitive Skills through Outdoor Programming, a series of structured experiences in wilderness settings meant to bring seventh and eighth grade students of different races together in challenging adventure activities intended to promote interaction, communication, and…