The hallmark of a successful education system is increasing or maintaining high student achievement. RAND research measures the effects of various types of school reforms on student achievement, with recent studies focusing on charter schools, No Child Left Behind, reform-oriented teaching, and classroom sizes.
PERIODICAL
Andreas Schleicher of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development provides a global perspective on what drives high-performing educational systems.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This study examines an anonymous urban district that, faced with declining enrollment, chose to make student achievement a major criterion in determining which schools would be closed. The district targeted low-performing schools in its closure plan, and sought to move their students to higher-performing schools.
REPORT
Principals new to their school face a variety of challenges that can influence their likelihood of improving their schools' performance and their likelihood of remaining the principal. The authors present research on first-year principals' experiences, actions, working conditions, and outcomes. The research is intended to inform efforts to promote school improvement and principal retention.
RESEARCH BRIEF
Presents a summary of research on first-year principals' experiences, actions, working conditions, and outcomes; the research is intended to inform efforts to promote school improvement and principal retention.
REPORT
The earliest years of a child's life are critical to physical, socio-emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development. High quality early education can improve readiness and success in school, particularly for disadvantaged children, but access to such programs is uneven.
REPORT
The ImpactFinder provides an overview of research impact and a basis for more detailed examination of the 'why and how' of research translation. The tool is implemented as a web questionnaire and collects information across a range of social, cultural and economic impacts. It was developed to meet the need of the UK's new framework for research funding but potentially has wider application.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This article examines the micropolitics of implementing New York City's Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program and school governance bodies (Compensation Committees) that determined distribution of school-level rewards among personnel.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This article examines what constitutes, contributes to, and is associated with high-quality coaches and coaching. Authors find that coaches generally held many of the qualifications recommended by state and national experts and principals and teachers rated their coaches highly on many indicators of quality. However, several common concerns about recruiting, retaining, and supporting high-quality coaches emerged.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Inclusionary zoning and economic integration in suburban neighborhoods not only reduces concentration of poverty, it directly improves low-income children's academic achievement.
REPORT
Pittsburgh instituted a new college scholarship program to encourage eligible students to continue their education. An assessment of the program offers recommendations for improving its short- and long-term effectiveness.
RESEARCH BRIEF
To deal with the challenges of struggling public schools, declining populations, and diminishing quality in the local workforce, Pittsburgh instituted a new college scholarship program to encourage eligible students to continue their education.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Assesses the effect that missing data in student achievement records, and the assumption that such data are missing at random, have on value-added modeling approaches to using student achievement data to assess school and teacher performance.
REPORT
Reviews the controversy over the true high school graduation rate in the United States, provides a comprehensive review of the debate, discusses shortcomings of current methods, and proposes new methods that address those shortcomings.
RESEARCH BRIEF
Performance-based teacher evaluations should incorporate multiple measures of performance. Use of student test scores must support valid, reliable inferences. Evaluating teachers of nontested subjects/grades may require supplemental assessments.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
This article provides the first analysis aimed at reducing the family-specific omitted variable bias pertaining to measures of absences in their influence on standardized testing achievement.
PERIODICAL
It has been a year since the devastating earthquake. The question now is how to use international aid and assistance wisely. This RAND Review cover story describes actions that could yield positive outcomes in Haiti in three to five years.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
We develop the "generalized persistence" (GP) model, a Bayesian multivariate model for estimating teacher effects that accommodates longitudinal data that are not vertically scaled by allowing less than perfect correlation of a teacher's effects across test administrations.
JOURNAL ARTICLE
We investigate how much value college enrollment adds to students' critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills, and the role college inputs play in developing these competencies, using data from a 2009 collegiate assessment pilot study in Colombia.
REPORT
Teacher effectiveness is multifaceted, and policymakers need to consider many factors, not just annual test scores, in assessing teachers' contributions to student learning.
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