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.
News Release
If prevention researchers build programs with developmentally relevant content, and provide this content in an engaging, confidential, and non-judgmental way, it can help middle school-aged children avoid alcohol.
Journal Article
Increases in reading skills and numeracy skills substantially increase the odds that an individual will quit smoking.
Journal Article
In this article, we discuss controlling simultaneous errors in classification of teachers or schools by a decision-theoretic approach.
Report
The Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act funds programs that curb crime among juvenile probationers and young at-risk offenders. This report summarizes, for fiscal year 2009-2010, state- and county-determined outcome measures from each program.
Project
UK Higher Education Funding Councils will begin using a new Research Excellence Framework in 2014 to assess the quality and impact of a university's research before providing further funding. RAND Europe's ImpactFinder can help UK higher education institutions evaluate their research impact.
Report
ImpactFinder is an analysis and advice package to identify research impacts using a web survey and to examine the why and how of research translation. It aims to support preparations for the UK's research funding framework but has wider application.
Report
An evaluation of the first course offered by the Caruth Police Institute at Dallas, supported by funds from the Communities Foundation of Texas, considered participants' opinions of the course's impact on various aspects of their jobs.
Periodical
Stories discuss world demographic trends, Afghan peace prospects, U.S. health care spending, California prisoner reentry, Latin American inequalities, global health, veterans' mental health, highway investments, teacher bonuses, and charter schools.
Report
Japanese translation of Support for Students Exposed to Trauma, a series of lessons aimed at reducing distress for middle school students who have been exposed to a traumatic life event.
Commentary
The results from Montgomery County demonstrate that an integrative housing policy can be an effective form of school policy for disadvantaged children, writes Heather Schwartz.
Multimedia
Laura Hamilton discusses what has been learned in the ten years since the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law in January 2002, including recommendations for addressing key limitations as Congress considers reauthorization.
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
Child care studies that have examined links between teachers' qualifications and children's outcomes often ignore teachers' and children's transitions between classrooms at a center throughout the day and only take into account head teacher qualifications.
Journal Article
This article examines a program in which bonuses were awarded to teams of middle school teachers based on their collective contribution to student test score gains.
Journal Article
In the 1960s, a new paradigm for training physicians emerged: one that combined clinical training and its focus on individual patients with a research training focused on studying the health of populations.
Journal Article
This paper investigate the extent to which secondary and higher education supply constraints affected aggregate educational attainment in Colombia for cohorts born between 1945 and 1981.
Journal Article
The goal of this study is to better understand the longitudinal cross-lagged associations between popularity, assessed through self-rating and peer nominations, and alcohol use among middle school students.
Journal Article
This article summarizes the results of two studies that investigated the properties of measures of instruction based on a teacher-generated instrument (the Scoop Notebook) that combines features of portfolios and self-report.
Journal Article
The authors consider the challenges and implications of controlling for school contextual bias when modeling teacher preparation program effects.
Journal Article
The objective of this paper is to delineate a set of standards for conducting benefit-cost analyses (BCAs) of early childhood programs.
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