With many cities showing an interest in afterschool system building and research providing a growing body of useful information, this Wallace Perspective offers a digest of the latest thinking on how to build and sustain an afterschool system, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for this promising work. The report (a follow-up to a…

Higher education in the United States is a complex and multilayered system where open-access community colleges coexist with highly selective, 4-year institutions to which only a handful of students each year gain access. Each institution plays a unique role in this marketplace, and students across the spectrum engage with the system at…

The focus of this study was to answer the following overarching question: How does a Twitter discussion format compare to a Facebook discussion format in terms of promoting collaborative argumentative discourse? Data analysis focused on the difference in amount of arguments, counter-arguments, reasons, and elaborations generated by participants…

This report describes the occurrence of discipline referrals and corresponding interventions and consequences used by schools for harassment, intimidation, or bullying behaviors during the 2014-2015 school year. Using data entered into the West Virginia Education Information System (WVEIS), we conducted two sets of analyses--one focusing on…

As state and local education agencies increasingly focus on serving educators with their data systems, a common challenge has arisen: identifying the critical knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed by teachers and administrators to use data effectively. Many states are creating data literacy and data use training programs for pre- and in-service…

We study a popular dual enrollment program in Washington State, "Running Start" using a new administrative database that links high school and postsecondary data. Conditional on prior high school performance, we find that students participating in Running Start are more likely to attend any college but less likely to attend four-year…

We study a popular dual enrollment program in Washington State, "Running Start" using a new administrative database that links high school and postsecondary data. Conditional on prior high school performance, we find that students participating in Running Start are more likely to attend any college but less likely to attend four-year…

General scientific literacy includes understanding the grounds on which scientific claims are based. The measurements scientists make and the data that they produce from them generally constitute these grounds. However, the nature of data generation has received relatively little attention from those interested in teaching science through inquiry.…

Learning analytics, the analysis and representation of data about learners in order to improve learning, is a new lens through which teachers can understand education. It is rooted in the dramatic increase in the quantity of data about learners and linked to management approaches that focus on quantitative metrics, which are sometimes antithetical…

The article investigates the patterns that arise in the convergence of numerical methods, particularly those in the errors involved in successive iterations, using data analysis and curve fitting methods. In particular, the results obtained are used to convey a deeper level of understanding of the concepts of linear, quadratic, and cubic…

Government policies sometimes cause unintended consequences for other potentially desirable behaviors. One such policy is the charitable tax deduction, which encourages charitable giving by allowing individuals to deduct giving from taxable income. Whether charitable giving and other desirable behaviors are complements or substitutes affect the…

This report demonstrates how existing national data can be used to first calculate upper limits on the average cost per participant and per outcome per state/territory for the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). These upper limits can then be used by state EFNEP administrators to obtain more precise estimates for their states,…

Innovation processes are critical for preserving and improving our standard of living. While innovation has been studied by many disciplines, the focus has been on qualitative measures that are specific to a single technological domain. I adopt a quantitative approach to investigate underlying regularities that generalize across multiple domains.…

The purpose of this study was to determine the screening measures used to assess students entering kindergarten in he state of Indiana. In addition, this study sought to determine how the data from these measures are used to inform classroom reading instruction. Eighty-nine schools participated in the study and sixty-two of those schools completed…

A large body of literature exists on evolutionary computing, genetic algorithms, decision trees, codified knowledge, and knowledge management systems; however, the intersection of these computing topics has not been widely researched. Moving through the set of all possible solutions--or traversing the search space--at random exhibits no control…