Since 2002, New York City has closed more than 20 underperforming public high schools, opened more than 200 new secondary schools, and introduced a centralized high school admissions process in which approximately 80,000 students a year indicate their school preferences from a wide-ranging choice of programs. At the heart of these reforms lie 123…

This report presents the results of an experiment conducted in Alabama beginning in the 2006/07 school year, to determine the effectiveness of the Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative (AMSTI), which aims to improve mathematics and science achievement in the state's K-12 schools. This study is the first randomized controlled trial…

This is the third-year report in a five-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). The MPCP, which began in 1990, provides government-funded vouchers for low-income children to attend private schools in the City of Milwaukee. The general purposes of the evaluation are to analyze the effectiveness of the MPCP in terms of…

A variety of preschool curricula is available and in widespread use, however, there is a lack of evidence from rigorous evaluations regarding the effects of these curricula on children's school readiness. The lack of such information is important as early childhood center-based programs have been a major, sometimes the sole, component of a number…

In the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Congress called for the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to conduct a rigorous study of the conditions and practices under which educational technology is effective in increasing student academic achievement. A 2007 report presenting study findings for the 2004-2005 school year, indicated that, after one…

This report addresses the following four questions by reporting on the impacts of Head Start on children and families during the children's preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade years: (1) What difference does Head Start make to key outcomes of development and learning (and in particular, the multiple domains of school readiness) for low-income…

State education departments, in discussions with Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast, identified low reading achievement as a critical issue for their students and expressed an interest in identifying effective strategies to promote the foundational skills in young students that might improve reading achievement. The Mississippi…

This report summarizes the findings from a national evaluation of mentoring programs funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program. The impact evaluation used an experimental design in which students were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Thirty-two purposively selected School Mentoring Programs and…