The grade-span configuration of a school district determines the number of school-to-school transitions students experience; a review of the literature concludes that these factors may have an impact on students' sense of belonging, the continuity of curriculum and instruction, and student academic achievement. This study derived input from…

This report was produced for the 2012 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers meeting in Mauritius. Its main purpose is to track the historical progress and likelihood of attainment of Education For All and education-specific Millennium Development Goals while also critically reviewing the methods used to track this progress. The analyses…

Assessing a high school's effectiveness is not straightforward. Comparing a school's standardized test scores to those of other schools is one approach to measuring effectiveness, but a major objection to this method is that students' test scores tend to be related to students' "socioeconomic" status--family household income, for…

We conducted an evaluation study of the Middle School Algebra Readiness Initiative, a middle school mathematics intervention that was implemented in two West Virginia school districts during the 2011-2012 school year. In participating middle schools, the Carnegie Learning MATHia® software intervention and accompanying classroom curriculum were…

The authors conducted a third-party study of the student achievement effects of Struggling Schools, a user-generated approach to Comprehensive School Reform (CSR). The design was a quasiexperimental, pre-post matched sample (N = 180) with school as unit of analysis, drawing on 3 years of achievement data from standardized external assessments.…

The Latino population in the United States is increasing rapidly, and Latino youth comprise a significant proportion of the overall school-age population. Latino youth, however, demonstrate lower levels of academic achievement. Research also indicates Latino youth consistently report higher levels of depressive symptoms. We examined the relation…

This study examined the effect of a quasi-experimental project on fifth grade English learners' achievement in state-mandated standards-based science and English reading assessment. A total of 166 treatment students and 80 comparison students from four randomized intermediate schools participated in the current project. The intervention consisted…

If teachers knew in advance whether their students are at risk of school failure, they would have the opportunity to supply these students with additional or special instruction. In Luxembourg, the likelihood of failure in school is particularly high. Taking this result into account, this paper deals with the identification of variables of primary…

To supplement the summer reading of National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) members, the NSTA Committee on Research in Science Education suggested a list of science education research articles that were published in the journals of NSTA's affiliates in 2012. These articles covered a variety of topics that include learning about…

This paper examines the effect of exposure to violent crime on students' standardized test performance among a sample of students in New York City public schools. To identify the effect of exposure to community violence on children's test scores, we compare students exposed to an incident of violent crime on their own blockface in the week prior…

This dissertation is comprised of three manuscripts and presents a line of research aimed at improving the measurement of bullying in schools. The first manuscript investigated the impact of an educational video on self-reports of bullying. A sample of 1,283 middle school students in randomly assigned classrooms either watched or did not watch an…

This study is an examination of Florida and Michigan's performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress's (NAEP) standardized test, often referred to as "the nation's report card." Immediately prior to and during Florida's immense improvement on these scores from the past 15 years, the state made substantial changes to its…

One way to improve struggling schools' access to effective teachers is to use selective transfer incentives. Such incentives offer bonuses for the highest-performing teachers to move into schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In this report, we provide evidence from a randomized experiment that tested whether such a policy intervention…

This paper aims to provide some statistics concerning the science performance of a group of 59 8th graders, studying in three different classes (may be regarded as different study groups). Eight science items were used, two from each content domain: chemistry, biology, mathematics and physics. These items were taken from the 2007 edition of the…

Teachers and administrators are faced with a basic question when planning for a school year: how should the students be grouped when coming to school? Should students of similar age be together or should students be assigned to multi-age classrooms at the elementary school level? If the multi-age method is chosen, how will academic progress be…