California collects expansive sets of data about students in its public K-12 and higher education systems--data that, collectively, have great potential to meet the information needs of state policymakers, local educators, and other stakeholders. But the data are collected and maintained in systems that are not connected, were designed for…

The issue of quality education is a critical topic of discussion, for South Africa facing the challenge of implementation amid a plethora of progressive policies. The purpose of the research reported here is to describe the procedures undertaken to explore the feasibility of implementing a monitoring system in the South African context. The…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal law that secures special education services for children with disabilities from the time they are born until they graduate from high school. The law was reauthorized by Congress in 2004, prompting a series of changes in the way special education services are implemented. These…

The purpose of the study was to assess early literacy skills and examine the presence and stability of challenging behaviors across the critical threshold of the kindergarten school year. Students' (n = 337) literacy performance (letter sound fluency, word attack, and phonological awareness) and challenging behaviors (teacher ratings of…

In this research brief, the National School Boards Association's Center for Public Education looks at indicators of school board effectiveness. From this research, it is clear that school boards in high-achieving districts exhibit habits and characteristics that are markedly different from boards in low-achieving districts. In the most dramatic…

It is well documented that classroom observation reports are used by school leaders as just one piece of the clinical supervision process of teachers (Cohen and Goldhaber, 2016). While the frequency of classroom observations might vary between school districts, recent regulations on Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) have added more…

This study uses a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impact of seventh-grade interventions delivered by 25 schools on the reading and school engagement outcomes of struggling readers. Students in participating schools were assigned to intervention (n = 1,495) or comparison (n = 4,397) conditions, based on their state reading…

Holt Primary School is a village school in which teachers work as a team within a climate of respect and trust. The teachers were fortunate to take part in the Bath Spa TAPS (Teacher Assessment in Primary Science) research project, which also overlapped with undertaking Gold PSQM (Primary Science Quality Mark). As a result, teacher confidence in…

The problem in an elementary school in Southern Texas was poor reading performance on grade level and progress monitoring tests for students with disabilities (SWDs). SWDs may learn to read proficiently when reading instruction is provided using the support facilitation model (SFM) that features a special educator who helps SWDs in literacy or…

The recommendations in this brief create a framework for using data effectively to make instructional decisions. The availability of student-level data for educators has pushed forward the movement to strengthen the role of data to guide instruction and improve student learning. While improvements in technology and assessments, as well as recent…

As part of standards-based reforms, there is increasing emphasis on ensuring that students with moderate intellectual disabilities (ID), including students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), learn to read. There is also converging evidence that explicit teaching of letter sounds, phonics, and sight words is effective for this population, but…

Ninth grade is a critical juncture for students. Students who make a good transition to high school are likely to graduate within four years. Those who do not--who fail to earn as many credits as they should in ninth grade--face an elevated risk of dropping out of high school. To understand how well they are supporting ninth graders, more school…

The Board of Education's mission is to equitably educate the whole child so that every student graduates with the tools to reach their full potential (Houston Independent School District (HISD), 2019). To succeed in their mission, the board participates in Lone Star Governance, whose intent is to provide a continuous improvement model for…

This special topic section features research regarding practices that will support mental health service delivery within a school-based multitiered framework. The articles include data and discussions regarding the evaluation of universal, targeted, or intensive intervention addressing mental health concerns and assessment tools intended for use…

This article is a comprehensive literature review of student-facing learning analytics reporting systems that track learning analytics data and report it directly to students. This literature review builds on four previously conducted literature reviews in similar domains. Out of the 945 articles retrieved from databases and journals, 93 articles…