RAND's research on pre-K, K-12, and higher education covers issues such as assessment and accountability, choice-based and standards-based school reform, vocational training, and the value of arts education and policy in sustaining communities and promoting a well-rounded community.
Many factors contribute to a student's academic performance, but research suggests that, among school-related factors, teachers matter most. What's less clear is how to measure an individual teacher's effectiveness. A new RAND Education website features fact sheets, blog posts, research briefs, and more on this important issue.
In applying latent class analysis techniques, we identified multiple types of students who do not pursue college. One group of non-enrollees (27.6%) reports forgoing college because the economic barriers are too high – either because of college affordability or family financial responsibility.
Examines the progress that Qatar has made in implementing a comprehensive reform, begun in 2002, of its K-12 education system.
Through a collaborative partnership between school staff and researchers, preliminary evidence suggests that receiving a school trauma intervention soon after screening compared to delaying treatment can result in better school grades.
Results from a structural equation modeling process of 1,126 teacher survey responses in England show that schools have an orientation to learning that includes beliefs about learning, systems and supports for learning, and collective capacity for learning.
California school districts — wielding new fiscal flexibility granted by state lawmakers — cut deeply into several popular programs to balance local budgets. School boards changed spending on adult education, special programs for gifted students, new textbooks, and other programs.
This paper presents new evidence on this question using longitudinal administrative data from Texas and a regression discontinuity research design.
The authors assessed the acceptability, feasibility, and outcomes of a school-based intervention to improve drinking water consumption among adolescents.
The authors use data from the Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study (UPCOS) to examine the association between classroom quality and prekindergarten children's progress from fall to spring on a range of cognitive and socio-emotional measures.
Lynn Karoly and Gabriella Gonzalez examine the current role of and future potential for early care and education (ECE) programs in promoting healthy development for immigrant children.
This project developed and designed Students for Nutrition and eXercise (SNaX), an intervention aimed at translating school obesity-prevention policies into practice with peer advocacy of healthy eating and school cafeteria changes.
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.
Results from a structural equation modeling process of 1126 teacher survey responses show that teachers bring an internal, external and collaborative orientation to their professional learning.
The analysis indicates that while the professional development of teachers in England is generally ineffectual and lacks school level systems and supports, the professional development and supports for professional learning by teachers in high performing schools display many of the characteristics associated with effective professional learning.
Researchers 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.
This paper examines auction sales of African tribal art for the continent as a whole and by individual nations of origin.
This paper defines a framework for the collection of cultural intelligence as a fundamental asset in countering threats to cultural security.
The Coburn and Turner framework provides a useful way to think about the conditions that should be in place to promote effective data use with and by students.
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.
While reading and numeracy best represent overall literacy, patients' relative strengths may vary. Effective communication with patients should rely on both oral exchange and written health information, and not rely on a single literacy skill.