This paper analyzes teacher responses to a distinctive reform that sought to implement alignment between high schools and colleges. A survey of 225 teachers is used to examine teachers' perceptions of the reform's effectiveness, further resources needed, and how perceptions changed over time. The reform was perceived as effective for college-bound…

We study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of US-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of US-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to…

This article examines Teach For America's (TFA) placement strategy in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, in which large numbers of TFA corps members are placed as clusters into a targeted set of disadvantaged schools, to investigate whether the large-scale infusion of TFA corps members into these schools induced broader improvements across the…

Math Snacks animations and support materials were developed for use on the web and mobile technologies to teach ratio, proportion, scale factor, and number line concepts using a multi-modal approach. Included in Math Snacks are: Animations which promote the visualization of a concept image; written lessons which provide cognitive complexity for…

Public policies often target individuals but within-family externalities of such interventions are understudied. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document how a third grade retention policy affects both the target children and their younger siblings. The policy improves test scores of both children while the spillover is up to 30% of…

"I CAN Learn"® is a computer-based math curriculum for students in middle school, high school, and college. It provides math instruction through a series of interactive lessons that students work on individually at their own computers. Students move at their own pace and must demonstrate mastery of each concept before progressing to the…

Evidence that teachers' short-term instructional effects persist over time and predict substantial long-run impacts on students' lives provides much of the impetus for a wide range of educational reforms focused on identifying and responding to differences in teachers' value-added to student learning. However, relatively little research has…

Enhancing all students' academic performance continues to be a national priority, and although achievement gains have been made overtime, shortfalls in mathematics learning for students with disabilities (SWD) remain. Research reveals that a substantial portion of the variability in students' mathematics achievement gains is due to the teacher. To…

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that…

"I CAN Learn"® is a computer-based math curriculum for students in middle school, high school, and college. It provides math instruction through a series of interactive lessons that students work on individually at their own computers. Students move at their own pace and must demonstrate mastery of each concept before progressing to the…

A phenomenological case study by Counsell (2007) explored and investigated the phenomenon of what happened as Florida's A+ Plan intersected with the life histories of one beginning African American female third grade teacher and one veteran White female third grade teacher at demographically different school communities in one Florida school…

Florida implemented the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), a statewide assessment of students' academic content, in 1996. Subsequently, in 2001, the State Board of Education established passing scores on the FCAT to determine eligibility for a standard high school diploma. As of the 2015-2016 academic year, Florida requires students to…

This study focuses on three case studies of three Florida teachers' action research projects focusing on improving at-risk students' literacy skills through innovative instructional technology, culturally-relevant poetry and bilingual teaching. The teachers, White, African American and Latina, describe their research journeys, the literacy…

Improving student performance for high-need student populations by improving the use of data in decision-making for early reading intervention programs in northwest Florida is the focus of this research to practice effort. The study is conceptually based on using a relational-feedback intervention (RFI) database model in early learning…

The intent of the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI) is to help students become college-ready by high school graduation, and subsequently to succeed in obtaining college credentials. This is done by testing college readiness in grade 11 and requiring that students testing below college-ready take college readiness and success…