California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) was awarded a five-year grant, "Puedes! Caminos, Cariño, y Carreras in a Post-Pandemic Era", that began in Fall 2022, to support educational opportunity and attainment of Hispanic students. Guided by the program goals, Year 1 activities demonstrated effective project operations on multiple…

Learning standards such as the "Common Core State Standards for Mathematics" [CCSSM] (NGA Center & CCSSO, 2010) advocate that we develop students' algebraic thinking "beginning in kindergarten." Such a tall order requires innovative approaches that re-imagine what teaching and learning mathematics means for the elementary…

The pandemic created daunting challenges for higher education. The federal government provided California Community Colleges billions of dollars in aid for students and institutions. How did they use these funds? How well did their pandemic recovery activities and investments help reengage students? What will institutions do when the money runs…

In the complex world of educational policy, causal inferences will be debated. As we review non-experimental designs in educational policy, we focus on how to clarify and focus the terms of debate. We begin by presenting the potential outcomes/counterfactual framework and then describe approximations to the counterfactual generated from the…

Our primary objective in this Special Issue was to respond to potential criticisms of AIED in potentially "perpetuating poor pedagogic practices, datafication, and introducing classroom surveillance" and to comment on the future of AIED in its coming of age. My overarching assumption in response to this line of critiques is that humans…

Because standardized tests in science are not given to PreK-3 students in Ohio, this report examined the longitudinal effects of learning from a teacher who had participated in the NURTURES professional development program. Specifically, it looked at the effects on students' mathematics and reading learning in grades 2-5 and science learning in…

As language technologies have become more sophisticated and prevalent, there have been increasing concerns about bias in natural language processing (NLP). Such work often focuses on the effects of bias instead of sources. In contrast, this paper discusses how normative language assumptions and ideologies influence a range of automated language…

We present 11 evidence-based practices for teaching writing to students. These include recommendations for teaching writing to younger students (aged 5-11) and older students (aged 6-18). The recommendations are based on findings from close to 1000 investigations. The proposed recommendations are (1) students need to write, but writing is not…

The goal in personalized assessment is to best fit the needs of each individual test taker, given the assessment purposes. Design-In-Real-Time (DIRTy) assessment reflects the progressive evolution in testing from a single test, to an adaptive test, to an adaptive assessment "system." In this paper, we lay the foundation for DIRTy…

Spatial thinking permeates much of our lives and is an asset when solving problems involving well-structured visual information or imagining solutions in physical or digital space. However, an estimated three million US school children have spatial talents that go unrecognized because of the tools commonly used for identification of academic…

The long-term academic outcomes for many students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are strikingly poor. It has been decades since students with ADHD were specifically recognized as eligible for special education through the Other Health Impaired category under the Education for all Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and…

The synthetic control method (SCM) is a popular approach for estimating the impact of a treatment on a single unit with panel data. Two challenges arise with higher frequency data (e.g., monthly versus yearly): (1) achieving excellent pre-treatment fit is typically more challenging; and (2) overfitting to noise is more likely. Aggregating data…

Project ENGAGE was an Education Innovation and Research federal grant awarded to the Osage County Interlocal Cooperative in October of 2017. This study addressed the effect of a combination of literacy and behavioral supports on the academic outcomes of elementary students in rural public schools. The five-year multi-element study included a…

Developmental researchers commonly utilize longitudinal data to decompose reciprocal and dynamic associations between repeatedly measured constructs to better understand the temporal precedence between constructs. Although the cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) is commonly used in developmental research, it has been criticized for its potential to…

Social scientists seeking to inform policy or public action must carefully consider how to identify effects and express inferences because actions based on invalid inferences will not yield the intended results. Recognizing the complexities and uncertainties of social science, we seek to inform inevitable debates about causal inferences by…