Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

This workbook guides a team in reviewing, revising, or replacing an existing professional learning system. The process outlined and the tools included support the team in conducting all aspects of its work, usually done over several months, with continuous progress monitoring and input from research, experts, and constituents. The workbook is…

Once the world leader in educational attainment, the United States has slipped well into the middle of the pack. Countries that were considered little more than educational backwaters just a few years ago have leapt to the forefront of student achievement. There's no shortage of factors for America's educational decline: budget cutbacks,…

Journey to College and Career (JTCC) is a PreK-12 program implemented at the research site to help students graduate from high school and plan for their future. JTCC had not been evaluated for its effectiveness at the research site regarding high school retention by determining (a) whether the goals and objectives of JTCC were being met and (b)…

The purpose of this study is to extend the work of Spybrook and Raudenbush (2009) and examine how the research designs and sample sizes changed from the planning phase to the implementation phase in the first wave of studies funded by IES. The authors examine the impact of the changes in terms of the changes in the precision of the study from the…

The concept of "implementation fidelity" is broadly used to capture the extent to which an intervention is executed as intended by the designers of the intervention (Century, Rudnick, & Freeman, 2010; Huntley, 2005, McNaught, Tarr, & Sears, 2010, Munter, 2010). Though implementation fidelity instruments are often used to assess…

The New Jersey Commission on Higher Education (the Commission) is required by statute (N.J.S.A. 18A: 62-46) to prepare an annual report to the Governor and Legislature containing a compilation of the data it collected about community college students who transferred to senior public institutions of higher education in New Jersey. At its July 25,…

The research is conclusive: Providing a high-quality early childhood education is crucial if we are to reach our state and national goals of educational equity and excellence, preparing children for college and career. The federal government, states throughout the country, and the courts are increasingly recognizing this reality. This report…

Interest in early care and education (ECE), also referred to as an early childhood education, has escalated in recent years. The interest is bipartisan, as evidenced by the multiple ECE-related bills already introduced by the 113th Congress. Further, 39 states have implemented prekindergarten (pre-K) programs. In 2013, 27 governors mentioned ECE…

For RCTs of education interventions, it is often of interest to estimate associations between student and mediating teacher practice outcomes, to examine the extent to which the study's conceptual model is supported by the data, and to identify specific mediators that are most associated with student learning. This article develops statistical…

In this article, a group of inservice providers and beginning researchers describe their experiences in learning to conduct evaluation research on a long-term school-university partnership program. We offer the practical lessons we learned in how to undertake such a study, and we share the immediate and powerful effects that the process of…

With the vast array of contextual factors, pedagogical approaches, models of implementation, and purposes of education and training related to online learning, educators, learners, and the general public alike are seeking answers regarding utility and effectiveness of online learning. This article identifies and responds to many of the challenges…

The NEAIR 2015 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Burlington, VT, conference. Papers in this document include:(1) Strategies to Analyze Course and Teaching Evaluation Data (Kati Li); (2) Using a Mixed Methods Approach to Assess a Leadership Mentoring Program (Betty Harper); (3) Flagship Institutions and the Struggle…

This three-volume report describes the "SAM (School Administration Manager) process," an approach that about 700 schools around the nation are using to direct more of principals' time and effort to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. Research has shown that a principal's instructional leadership is second only to teaching among…

Cities around the country are building systems that seek to make the most of public and private resources to provide widespread, high-quality, out-of-school time opportunities. Local officials are leading these efforts because participation in OST programs not only benefits young people but also the cities in which they live, with the potential to…