Evidence-based education aims to support policy makers choosing between potential interventions. This rarely involves considering each in isolation; instead, sets of evidence regarding many potential policy interventions are considered. Filtering a set on any quantity measured with error risks the "winner's curse": conditional on…

Evidence-based policy at the local level requires predicting the impact of an intervention to inform whether it should be adopted. Increasingly, local policymakers have access to published research evaluating the effectiveness of policy interventions from national research clearinghouses that review and disseminate evidence from program…

Background/Context: When a researcher tests an educational program, product, or policy in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and detects a significant effect on an outcome, the intervention is usually classified as something that "works." When the expected effects are not found, however, there is seldom an orderly and transparent…

School-based evaluations of interventions are increasingly common in education research. Ideally, the results of these evaluations are used to make evidence-based policy decisions for students. However, it is difficult to make generalizations from these evaluations because the types of schools included in the studies are typically not selected…

When cluster randomized experiments are analyzed as if units were independent, test statistics for treatment effects can be anticonservative. Hedges proposed a correction for such tests by scaling them to control their Type I error rate. This article generalizes the Hedges correction from a posttest-only experimental design to more common designs…

Improving academic, behavioural, and social outcomes of students through empirical research has been a firm commitment among researchers, policy-makers, and other professionals in education across Europe and the United States (U.S.). To assist in building scientific evidences, executive bodies such as the European Commission and the Institute for…

Research Learning Communities (RLC) was an intervention that aimed to improve teaching quality and learning outcomes by raising teachers' awareness, understanding, and use of educational research in their teaching practice. Two Evidence Champion teachers from each school attended four RLC workshops with peers from up to four other schools.…

Teachers sometimes struggle to deliver evidence based programs designed to prevent and ameliorate chronic problem behaviors of young children with integrity. Identifying factors associated with variations in the quantity and quality of delivery is thus an important goal for the field. This study investigated factors associated with teacher…

Given increasing interest in evidence-based policy, there is growing attention to how well the results from rigorous program evaluations may inform policy decisions. However, little attention has been paid to documenting the characteristics of schools or districts that participate in rigorous educational evaluations, and how they compare to…

This report describes in detail how researchers, policymakers, and program administrators can recognize opportunities for experiments and carry them out. Specifically, the report focuses on opportunistic experiments, defined as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that study the effects of initiatives, program changes, or policy actions that…

Purpose: This article provides benchmark data on within-group effect sizes from published randomized clinical trials (RCTs) supporting the efficacy of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) for traumatized children. Methods: Within-group effect-size benchmarks for symptoms of trauma, anxiety, and depression were calculated via the…

Early math skills are a strong predictor of later achievement for young children, not only in math, but in other domains as well. Exhibiting strong math skills in elementary school is predictive of later high school completion and college attendance. To that end, the Making Pre-K Count and High 5s studies set out to rigorously assess whether…

We report on a randomized controlled trial of Targeted Mental Health in Schools (TaMHS), which is a nationally mandated school-based mental health program in England. TaMHS aimed to improve mental health for students with, or at risk of, behavioral and emotional difficulties by providing evidence-informed interventions relating to closer working…

Coaching models are increasingly used in schools to enhance fidelity and effectiveness of evidence-based interventions, yet little is known about the relationship between the coach and teacher (i.e., coach-teacher alliance), which may indirectly enhance teacher and student outcomes through improved implementation quality. There is also limited…

Latinx students are the largest ethnic minority school-age population, yet they have some of the lowest reading proficiency levels and highest rates of school dropout and experience significant unmet behavioral health needs. School-based interventions addressing behavioral challenges and parent engagement are recommended to support Latinx…