Educators and policymakers are paying increased attention to the academic outcomes of students in the middle grades (i.e., Grades 6-8). One reform proposed to improve outcomes for these students is to replace middle schools (with Grade 6-8, 7-8, or 7-9 configurations) with K-8 schools. This longitudinal study evaluated the effects of continuously…

The purpose of this varied replication study was to evaluate the effects of a supplemental reading intervention on the beginning reading performance of kindergarten students in a different geographical location and in a different instructional context from the initial randomized trial. A second purpose was to investigate whether students who…

This study investigates the impact of teacher characteristics and instructional strategies on the mathematics achievement of students in kindergarten and first grade and tackles the question of how best to use longitudinal survey data to elicit causal inference in the face of potential threats to validity due to nonrandom assignment to treatment.…

We used a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a research-based model for scaling up educational interventions, focusing on the persistence of effects with and without a follow-through intervention. The instantiation of the Technology-enhanced, Research-based, Instruction, Assessment, and professional Development (TRIAD) model…

This article reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Read Well Kindergarten" (RWK), a program that focuses on the development of vocabulary, phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, and decoding. Kindergarten teachers in 24 elementary schools in New Mexico and Oregon were randomly assigned, by school, to teach RWK or their…

Factors were explored that predicted whether teachers sustained the use of a validated reading intervention. Seventy-three teachers from 37 schools in 3 states were asked in interviews whether they continued to use Kindergarten Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (KPALS) 1 year after their involvement in the program. A logistic regression model was…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of an 18-week program of direct and extended vocabulary instruction with kindergarten students on both proximal measures of target word knowledge and transfer measures of generalized language and literacy. A second purpose was to examine whether treatment effects would be moderated by…

Prior research estimating the effect of Catholic schooling has focused on high school, where evidence suggests a positive effect of Catholic versus public schooling. In this article, we estimate the effect of attending a Catholic elementary school rather than a public school on the math and reading skills of children in kindergarten through fifth…