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.
The authors assemble the first comprehensive, national, school-level dataset concerning detailed performance measures used to calculate Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
UK higher education institutions (HEIs) have been developing collaborative relationships with organisations outside the education sector for many generations. However, the scale and range of these activities have changed significantly. RAND Europe and the LFHE have analysed recent collaborations of this kind to provide insight and recommendations on how to structure leadership, management and governance in order to effectively set up and implement emerging innovative relationships.
The paper also explores the barriers to access to high quality CPD that exist for teachers at both the individual and school levels. Data for the analyses presented were collected as part of the nationally representative, "Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England--State of the Nation" research study which was funded by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA).
In this article, the author examines two school districts that are highly decentralized to understand the central-office roles: (1) Edmonton, Canada; and (2) Lake Wales Charter Schools District in central Florida.
Describes the Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT), a three-year study intended to assess the effect of financial rewards for teachers whose students showed unusually large gains on standardized tests.
This paper examines the impact of a gifted program on retention in an urban school district using a regression discontinuity design.
This paper examines the impact of a gifted program on retention in an urban school district using a regression discontinuity design.
It is unclear if vouchers increase educational productivity or are purely redistributive, benefiting recipients by giving them access to more desirable peers at others' expense. To examine this, the authors study an educational voucher programme in Colombia which allocated vouchers by lottery.
This study capitalizes on a natural experiment that occurred in California between 2000 and 2002.
However, investigating the process of expectation formation back to the elementary grades yields insights not evident when analyses are limited to the high school years.
This paper sets out to understand how teachers and school leaders in England perceive the benefits and effectiveness of CPD activity.
A number of factors account for the failure of performance assessment to capture a large role in achievement testing in the U.S., and this history can inform educators and education policymakers looking for better ways to test students and schools in an era of standards-based accountability.
Addresses complex issues related to teacher assessment and teacher quality.
Based on findings from two federally funded studies--the Study of State Implementation of Accountability and Teacher Quality Under NCLB (SSI-NCLB) and the National Longitudinal Study of NCLB (NLS-NCLB)--this report describes the progress that states, districts, and schools have made in implementing the accountability provisions of NCLB through 2006-07.
The authors address globalization and political control of education, with a focus on understanding the larger contextual conditions associated with globalization and regulation.
This issue brief is intended to clarify some of the reasons that Head Start has been difficult to evaluate in a rigorous way, and why even the most rigorous evaluations of Head Start have been criticized for having shortcomings.
This study of perceptions of drinking water in a California school district found that school staff and public health officials have a range of concerns about water quality and availability; as some schools move to replace sugary drinks in schools and develop policies to promote water consumption, they should explore ways of addressing these concerns.
This report presents findings from the first year of District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) (2008-09 school year), with emphasis on program participation decisions made by districts, the local design preferences for performance pay plans, and the early implementation experiences of D.A.T.E. participants.
The authors propose several guidelines for using existing graduation and persistence rate data and argue that a national effort to track students as they progress through high school is essential to reconcile conflicting estimates.
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