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Elementary Education

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Elementary education comprises the period from when a student enters school, generally around the age of 5 or 6, until the student moves on to middle or secondary school, around the age of 12 or 13. RAND research in the area includes school reform, the role and effectiveness of teachers and school administration, and the increasing use of private-sector school management.

Report

How to Support Social and Emotional Learning in School and Out of School

Oct 20, 2020

Do children benefit when schools and out-of-school time programs partner to improve and align social and emotional learning (SEL)? Lessons from six communities that made such efforts can help school districts and out-of-school time providers implement their own SEL programs.
Report

COVID-19 Testing in Schools Is Complex but Doable

Mar 9, 2021

COVID-19 testing can be effectively integrated into K–12 schools' pandemic response plans. And it helps families and staff feel more comfortable with in-person instruction. Insights from early adopters of COVID-19 testing in fall 2020 can help schools reopen safely.

Explore Elementary Education

Blog

COVID-19 Testing in Schools, Family Caregivers, U.S. Entrepreneurship: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on COVID-19 testing in schools, giving a voice to family caregivers, preparing for daylight saving time, and more.

Mar 12, 2021
News Release

COVID-19 Testing in Schools Complex But Doable, Worth the Effort

COVID-19 testing can be effectively integrated into K–12 schools' pandemic response plans, helping families and staff feel more comfortable with in-person instruction.

Mar 9, 2021
Report

Teachers' Lesson Modifications for Students with Disabilities: Findings from the 2020 American Instructional Resources Survey

In this Data Note, researchers explore teachers' reports of how much and in what ways they modify their lessons to support students with disabilities.

Feb 23, 2021
News Release

Stress Was Leading Reason Teachers Quit Before Pandemic, and COVID-19 Has Made Matters Worse

Stress was the most common reason teachers cited for leaving the profession before and during the pandemic. Three of four former teachers said work was often or always stressful in the most recent year in which they taught in a public school.

Feb 22, 2021
Report

Stress Topped the Reasons Why Teachers Quit, Even Before COVID-19

Stress was the most common reason teachers cited for leaving the profession, both before and during the pandemic. Most former teachers went on to take jobs for less or equal pay, with many taking jobs with no health insurance or retirement benefits.

Feb 22, 2021
Commentary

Lost Learning and the Costs of COVID-19

President Biden's plan calls for $130 billion to help schools safely reopen and identifies summer school or other supports to help students compensate for lost learning time as permissible uses of this funding. Recent RAND research can shed light on how Congress might consider divvying up these funds to support students over the next year.

Feb 10, 2021
Report

Early Lessons from Schools and Out-of-School Time Programs Implementing Social and Emotional Learning: Executive Summary

In this summary, RAND researchers describe the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative, as well as findings and early lessons from the first two years of implementation in the six participating communities.

Oct 20, 2020
Report

How Instructional Materials Are Used and Supported in U.S. K–12 Classrooms: Findings from the 2019 American Instructional Resources Survey

New results from the RAND American Instructional Resources Survey, which was fielded to a national sample of public teachers and school leaders in spring 2019, shed light on how teachers use instructional materials in their classroom.

Aug 31, 2020
Journal Article

Not Where You Start, but How Much You Grow: An Addendum to the Coleman Report

The Coleman Report (1966) first suggested that schools play a relatively small part in shaping students' achievement. The results in this paper suggest a need to update this conventional wisdom.

Jul 28, 2020
Journal Article

School's Out: The Role of Summers in Understanding Achievement Disparities

We use a novel data set with more than 200 million test scores for students across the United States to explore whether the "fanning out" of achievement from Grades 1 to 8 occurs while students are in school or during the intervening summers.

Jul 28, 2020
Journal Article

Day by Day: Investigating Variation in Elementary Mathematics Instruction That Supports the Common Core

This article investigates the extent to which students were being engaged in complex practices exemplified by Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Standards for Mathematical Practice on a daily basis, according to teachers' reports.

May 15, 2020
Commentary

Coronavirus Will Necessitate Changes in Schools When They Reopen

Schools will likely need to modify their practices so that their teachers, staff, and students maintain social distancing standards whenever they reopen. If a federal agency would create guidance, then educators could focus on teaching students.

Apr 16, 2020
Research Brief

Four Lessons Learned from Implementing a Social and Emotional Learning Program to Enhance School Safety

This brief describes the implementation of Tools for Life®, a social and emotional learning program, in elementary and middle schools in Jackson, Mississippi, and evaluates the program's effects on school climate and safety.

Mar 17, 2020
Journal Article

eRevis(ing): Students' Revision of Text Evidence Use in an Automated Writing Evaluation System

We investigate students' implementation of the feedback messages they received in an automated writing evaluation system (eRevise) that aims to improve students' use of text evidence in their writing.

Feb 26, 2020
Journal Article

Automated Scoring of Students' Use of Text Evidence in Writing

The authors describe an approach to using automated essay-scoring technologies to provide information about students' skills at marshaling text evidence in the upper elementary grades.

Feb 26, 2020
Journal Article

eRevise: Using Natural Language Processing to Provide Formative Feedback on Text Evidence Usage in Student Writing

This paper presents the design and first classroom evaluation of eRevise, an Automated Writing Evaluation system for improving students' ability to use text evidence - a dimension of writing that is important for college and career readiness.

Feb 26, 2020
Journal Article

The Organizational Landscape of Schools: School Employees' Conceptualizations of Organizations in Their Environment

Based on my analysis, I extend theory on the role of neighborhood organizations in creating overlap and connection between the school and the community and extend work on organizational members' sense-making about the organizational field.

Jan 24, 2020
Report

The Big Lift Descriptive Analyses: Progress Across Three Kindergarten Classes

In this report, the authors present results describing early learning outcomes of children from three kindergarten classes who were eligible to participate in The Big Lift, a preschool-third-grade initiative that aims to boost reading proficiency.

Jan 13, 2020

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RAND Topic:
Elementary Education

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