To sustain its economic growth in the coming years, China will have to increase the country's supply of skilled labor by enabling its workforce to attain to higher levels of formal education. Unfortunately, when children in poor, rural areas today grow up, they may not be able to enjoy China's future economic prosperity because of their low levels…

Despite increasing consensus that social-emotional learning (SEL) is an important contributor to success in school and life, few tools are available for educators to assess SEL skill and to use assessment results to inform educational practice. In particular, there are no scalable, feasible, usable, and scientifically sound assessment systems that…

Teacher evaluation is at the center of current education policy reform. Most evaluation systems rely at least in part on principals' assessments of teachers, and their discretionary judgments carry substantial weight. However, we know relatively little about what they value when determining evaluations and high stakes personnel decisions. The…

The Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (FCR-STEM) was awarded a grant by the Florida Department of Education to develop a Mathematics Formative Assessment System (MFAS) aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Intended for both teachers and students, formative assessment is a process that…

While the idea of teacher performance-pay is increasingly making its way into policy, the evidence on the effectiveness of such programs is both limited and mixed. The central questions in the literature on teacher performance pay to date have been whether teacher performance pay based on test scores can improve student achievement, and whether…

Recent efforts to attract and retain effective educators and to improve teaching practices have focused on reforming evaluation and compensation systems for teachers and principals. In 2006, Congress established the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), which provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in…

Over the past twenty years, efforts to turn around low-performing schools have increasingly become a central component of federal and state education policy agendas. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the impact of the Wraparound Zones Initiative (WAZ), a program supported by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education…

The authors' purpose was to study the efficacy of patterning instruction in improving the reading and mathematics proficiency of first grade children. Patterning instruction was compared to equal time and effort spent on instruction on reading or mathematics or social studies, which are control conditions in this experiment. The question for…

School districts are increasingly adopting technology-based resources in an attempt to improve student achievement. This paper reports the two-year results from randomized control trial of Achieve3000 in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) in Raleigh, North Carolina. Achieve3000 is an early literacy program that differentiates non-fiction…

One of the most persistent and urgent problems facing education policymakers is the provision of highly effective teachers in all of the nation's classrooms. Of all school-level factors related to student learning and achievement, the student's teacher is consistently the most important (Goldhaber 2002; Rockoff 2004; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain…

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress in increasing primary school enrollment and completion among the very poor. However, challenges in improving reading persist. This study contributes to the evidence base on what works to improve early-grade reading skills by evaluating an early reading program implemented in two…

Currently in Kenya, secondary school government bursaries are administered through committees set up at the level of parliamentary constituencies. However, there is widespread consensus that this system is not functioning adequately, as the process is often haphazard and funds are often spread too thinly across students. The Ministry of Education…

Teacher evaluation is currently a major policy issue at all levels of the K-12 system driven in large part by current US Department of Education requirements. The main objective of this study is to explore the patterns of relationship between observational scores and value-added measures of teacher performance in math classrooms and the variation…

This paper reports preliminary results from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a multi-component nurturing program designed to increase gifted identification among minority students. In 2014-15, the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), in partnership with Duke University, implemented "Nurturing for a Bright Tomorrow"…

Recently, researchers have begun to employ rigorous statistical methods and developmentally-informed theories to evaluate outcomes for students retained in non-kindergarten early elementary school. However, the majority of this research focuses on academic outcomes. Gaps remain regarding retention's effects on psychosocial outcomes important to…