Making whole-child education the norm
This policy brief describes research and policy initiatives that can make social and emotional skills a focal point in children’s education. The authors review the literature on how social and emotional skills develop, and how they are important drivers of cognitive skills, school, and life...
Teaching Social Skills to Improve Grades and Lives
A growing body of evidence has shown that social and emotional strengths in children and adults lead to school and life success. This article from the New York Times summarizes some of the key studies that support this claim, and argues that schools and teachers need to promote social and emotional...
The Interim Test Effect: Testing Prior Material Can Facilitate the Learning of New Material
This article reports on five experiments that were conducted to examine the effect on interim testing of prior textual material on learning of subsequent textual learning, which the authors term an interim-test effect. Participants were prompted to recall each section of an expository text before...
Charting Success: Data Use and Student Achievement in Urban Schools
The study examines the relationship between interim data-use practices at the school and classroom levels and student achievement. The study draws on teacher and principal survey data with more than 1,500 teachers and 150 school principals and student achievement data from over 60,000 students...
A Multi-State District-Level Cluster randomized Trial of the Impact of Data-Driven Reform on Reading and Mathematics Achievement
The study analyzed mathematics and reading achievement outcomes from a district-level random assignment study fielded in over 500 schools within 59 school districts and seven states. The treatment was a data driven reform initiative implemented by Johns Hopkins Center for Data-Driven Reform in...
The Impact of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Program on Student Reading Achievement
The study tested the effectiveness of the MAP program in thirty-two elementary schools in five Illinois districts. Half the schools were randomly assigned to implement MAP program in grade 4, and the other half were assigned to implement MAP in grade 5. The MAP program included both training,...
The Impact of Indiana's System of Interim Assessments on Mathematics and Reading Achievement
The randomized controlled study in Indiana found, and the WWC confirmed, that the use of Indiana’s Diagnostic Assessment Tools (mClass for K-2, Acuity for grades 3-8) did not have a statistically significant impact on general mathematics achievement or reading achievement for the full sample of...
Effects of Interim Assessments Across the Achievement Distribution: Evidence From an Experiment
This is a follow-on study from Konstantopoulos et al., 2016. Results generally show that lower-achievers in grades 3-8 seem to benefit more from interim assessments (Acuity) than higher-achieving students. The magnitude of the effects were larger in math than reading; however, no effects were found...