Catherine Armstrong Asher, Ethan Scherer, James S. Kim

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What features of text messaging campaigns for early elementary families might increase their effectiveness?

Text messaging interventions are an increasingly popular way to support students and their families. We compared how three features of text messages, sent to parents, affect the reading behavior and test scores of their early elementary school children:

Summary by: Hang (Heather) Do

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What was this study about?

Chronic absenteeism (missing more than 10% of school days or more in one year) negatively impacts children’s school achievement and development. Yet, little is known about how absenteeism influences the effectiveness of interventions. In this study, the authors examined whether absenteeism affected the impacts of an intensive two-year professional development (PD) intervention aiming to improve the quality of Chilean public preschool and kindergarten and enhance the language and literacy outcomes of participating children (UBC (Un Buen Comienzo/A Good Start)).

Heidi H. Erickson, Jonathan N. Mills, and Patrick J. Wolf

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How did the LSP affect student outcomes?

A new study estimates the average impact of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on student achievement in math, English Language Arts (ELA), and science after four years of the program. After large initial declines in achievement in the first year of the program, students in grades 1-5 who used LSP scholarships won through lotteries regained some of their lost ground. However, they continued to perform below similar students who did not receive a scholarship by a lottery.

Trey Miller, Lindsay Daugherty, Paco Martorell, and Russell Gerber

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What are corequisites?

Faced with troubling evidence on the success of students who take traditional developmental education (DE) courses, states and higher education institutions across the United States are rethinking the way they address college readiness. Corequisite remediation is one promising and common approach to DE reform. Under corequisite remediation, students skip the traditional DE course(s) and move immediately into a foundational college-level course, while also being required to enroll in concurrent DE support in that same semester. Corequisites also call for changes to instruction to better align content in DE with college-level coursework and some models build in opportunities for more personalized support and/or peer support through various design features such as smaller class sizes and the mixing of college ready and DE students.

Allison Atteberry, Kendra Bischoff, Ann Owens

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How do we identify districts where ethnoracial achievement disparities have shrunk since 2009?

We draw on district-level test score data to describe an approach for measuring ethnoracial achievement gaps and assessing trends toward achievement equity from 2009 to 2016. We assess the national landscape to examine if (and to what extent) school districts’ achievement gaps have shrunk or widened since 2009.

Tao Hao, Zhe Wang, Yuliya Ardasheva

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A core component to learning a second language (L2) is vocabulary acquisition. New technologies have the potential to substantially improve vocabulary acquisition. Technological activities can elicit L2 learners’ interest, provide more verbal and multimedia exposure to the target language, and present opportunities to interact with the target language using various technological devices.

Study Inclusion Criteria

Summary by: Yining Hua

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What is QuickReads Technology? Is it effective?

QuickReads (QR) is a curriculum that uses science and social studies texts to build reading skills. It has both print-only and technology + print formats and utilizes 15-minute instructional sessions built on a model with wide and long-lasting support in comprehension instruction. This study finds that QR enhanced students’ reading skills in all evaluated areas: reading fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. The figure shows the outcome of the reading comprehension assessment. The three bars within each grade group represent students who 1) did not use QR (control), 2) used QR print materials, and 3) used QR technology-based and printed materials, respectively (from left to right). Across all grades, QR effectively enhanced students reading fluency.

Mengli Song, Andrew J. Wayne, Michael S. Garet, Seth Brown, and Jordan Rickles

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What is the intervention tested in this study?

The 2-year intervention consisted of three components that were designed to provide educators with performance feedback on classroom practice (four times per year), student growth (once per year), and principal leadership (twice per year), respectively. The intervention targeted principals and teachers of reading and mathematics in grades 4–8, whose participation in the intervention was voluntary with no consequences for tenure or employment.

Tricia A. Zucker, María S. Carlo, Susan H. Landry, Saba S. Masood, Jeffrey M. Williams, Vibhuti Bhavsar

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Can Developing Talkers improve academic vocabulary?

Yes, according to a rigorous study conducted in Texas with young students who were mostly English learners (ELs, 63%). Students who participated in a 26-week shared reading program, which taught academic vocabulary and asked inferential comprehension questions, learned more sophisticated words compared with students who did not (see bar chart below). This study shows that an intervention can cause children as young as pre-kindergarten (pre-k) and kindergarten to learn more academic words. This extends past research on direct instruction to academic level words. Developing academic level language in the earliest grades aligns with modern learning guidelines that view rigorous classroom discourse as foundational to college and career readiness.

Rebecca Wolf, Jennifer Morrison, Amanda Inns, Robert Slavin, and Kelsey Risman

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Rigorous evidence of program effectiveness has become increasingly important with the 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). One question that has not yet been addressed is whether findings from program evaluations carried out or commissioned by developers are as trustworthy as those identified in studies by independent third parties. Using study data from the What Works Clearinghouse, we found evidence of a “developer effect,” where program evaluations carried out or commissioned by developers produced average effect sizes that were substantially larger than those identified in evaluations conducted by independent parties.

Why is it important to accurately determine the effect sizes of an educational program?