This essay proposes that efforts at assessing the contribution of faith-based schools to faith formation be grounded in an account of student vocation framed by Christian practices. We identify gaps in research on assessment of school effectiveness and suggest that a focus on the present vocation of students may fruitfully connect faith and…

Following a sample of students who participated in admissions lotteries at eight Early College High Schools (ECs) partnering with 2-year colleges, this study examined the college enrollment and degree completion of students who won admissions lotteries and enrolled in ECs in Grade 9 (i.e., EC students), and assessed the EC impact--in terms of…

Since the early 2000s, educational evaluation research has primarily centered on teachers', rather than schools', contributions to students' academic outcomes due to concerns that estimates of the latter were smaller, less stable, and more prone to measurement error. We argue that this disparity should be reduced. Using administrative data from…

School improvement in chronically under-performing schools remains a formidable challenge for school leaders. Recent policies in the U.S. have created incentives for school leaders to attempt new strategies to improve outcomes, and increasingly, school leaders of charter management organizations and other multi-school organizations (MSOs) are…

There is an increasing interest of policies and projects to adapt boarding schools as a means to provide quality education for educationally disadvantaged students. However, little evidence is available for the effectiveness of boarding schools. The current study examined the boarding effect on primary and middle school student mathematics…

Poverty has been identified as an obstacle to educational success. In 2003, Washington state researchers, Shannon and Bylsma (2007), conducted a study to uncover the commonalities found in schools outperforming their socioeconomic indicators. Their work identified nine characteristics of high-performing schools and determined all successful…

Cities such as New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Silicon Valley and other metropolitan areas, also known as "Superstar Cities," are very effective at attracting highly educated workers. In a virtuous cycle, these workers migrate to where the interesting, highly paid jobs are, where other smart young people live, and where the cultural…

School inspections are a key component of the accountability system in many education systems, including England. The judgments and reports produced through these inspections are widely used by parents when they are choosing a school for their children. But should they be? This paper presents new evidence on this issue. We illustrate how parents…

Leadership in educational settings, especially in schools, has a long history. Instructional leadership is a leadership style that is seen to increase school effectiveness. This study aims to map bibliographic data on instructional leadership over the past eight decades (1941-2022). The quantitative research approach to analyzing bibliographic…

This paper reviews research on the design and effectiveness of preschools in the United States. Three randomized controlled trials that enrolled roughly 350 total children in demonstration studies during the 1960s and 1970s shape much of the current discussion of preschool. We examine what these studies and more recent ones based on random…

The Current Generation of American public-school students has grown up in the era of centralized, standardized data. Anyone curious about how local schools were doing could look at pass rates on annual exams in math and reading, the foundation of federally mandated, test-based accountability. New rules are poised to change this system. The federal…

The uses to which educational effectiveness research (EER) is put by policymakers cannot be blamed on the field, but it is apparent that it has become aligned with the utilitarianism of Western government policy and transnational bodies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This alignment was not consciously…

In this chapter, we focus on an institutional case study of Paul Quinn College, a historically Black college, to explore how its adoption of a "new urban college model" provides innovative ways of assessing institutions' success in supporting their students.

The intent of this annual report is to shine light on the Texas Education Agency's commitment to ensuring that every one of the more than five million public school students in Texas is prepared for success in college, a career or the military. The achievements of Texas students are a testament to the hard work of educators across the state. Their…

The purpose of this Action Research study was to examine and improve the instructional practices and social-emotional learning for multilingual learners in third-grade, urban public school classrooms. Participants and data collected in Cycle 1 consisted of six interviews with third-grade classroom and special education teachers, three classroom…