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Whole-school or whole-class programs designed to promote positive behavior can enhance the likelihood that effective teaching and learning occur for all students. This practice guide is intended to help elementary education educators, as well as school and district administrators and parents, implement and support effective prevention-focused strategies that promote positive student behavior and related outcomes. In considering the growing body of research on prevention-focused frameworks to improve students' academic and behavior outcomes, this practice guide focuses on whole-school or whole-class practices to support positive behavior by elementary school students, including students identified as having disabilities or who are at risk of identification for special education services. This protocol guides the systematic review of research that informs recommendations for the guide, "Promoting Social and Behavioral Success for Learning in Elementary Schools: Practice Recommendations for Elementary School Educators, School and District Administrators, and Parents" (ED617775). [For "Promoting Social and Behavioral Success for Learning in Elementary Schools: Introduction to Recommendations," see ED617820.]

This guide will help researchers design and implement impact studies in education so that the findings are more generalizable to the study's target population. Guidance is provided on key steps that researchers can take, including defining the target population, selecting a sample of schools--and replacement schools, when needed--managing school recruitment, assessing, and adjusting for differences between the sample and target population, and reporting information on the generalizability of the study findings.

With the recent reauthorization of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), unprecedented philanthropic investment in career pathways, and the urgent economic needs of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, the career readiness field is at a critical moment in time. To meet this moment, states, districts, colleges and organizations should pause to reflect on the career readiness data they collect and ensure that the information is relevant and actionable. This Career Readiness Metrics Framework presents a comprehensive list of metrics that span middle school through adulthood and provides a standard for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to evaluate whether learners are on track for and progressing through their career pathways. It should serve as a resource to help leaders at the state and local levels go beyond traditional accountability systems and select, refine and prioritize career readiness indicators from middle school through adulthood.

This tool is intended to support state and local education agencies in developing a statistical model for estimating student postsecondary success at the school or district level. The tool guides education agency researchers, analysts, and decisionmakers through options to consider when developing their own model. The resulting model generates an indicator of a school's or district's contribution to the postsecondary success of its students after contextual factors are accounted for that might be outside a school's or district's control, such as student demographic characteristics and community characteristics. State and local education agencies could use the information generated by the models they develop to help meet federal and state reporting requirements and to inform their own efforts to improve their students' postsecondary success.

Schools at a Glance provides, in a single document, information about enrollment, staffing, facilities, programs, outcome measures, and personnel costs for each school. Information on personnel costs for each school includes position salaries for professional and supporting services employees and employee benefits costs related to positions. Summaries of the data for the county and by level (elementary, middle, high, and special schools) also are included. [This publication is the result of the efforts of several offices within Montgomery County Public Schools: Office of the Chief Operating Officer, Office of the Chief of Staff, Office of the Chief of Strategic Initiatives, Office of Shared Accountability, Office of Student Data Systems, Office of the Chief of School Support and Well-Being, Office of the Chief Academic Officer, and Office of Curriculum and Instructional Programs. For the 2021-2022 report, see ED623566.]

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which was established under the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002. It is an important part of IES's strategy to use rigorous and relevant research, evaluation, and statistics to improve the nation's education system. The WWC examines research about interventions that focus on improving educationally relevant outcomes, including those for students and educators. The WWC systematic review process is the basis of many of its products, enabling the WWC to use consistent, objective, and transparent standards and procedures in its reviews, while also ensuring comprehensive coverage of the relevant literature. The WWC systematic review process consists of five steps: (1) Developing the review protocol; (2) Identifying relevant literature; (3) Screening studies; (4) Reviewing studies; and (5) Reporting on findings. A separate WWC Standards Handbook describes step 4, including the standards used by the WWC to review studies (ED602036). This new "Procedures Handbook" updates the previous Version 4.0 to Version 4.1. The following substantive updates were made: (1) The removal of the "substantively important" designation; (2) The addition of standard error calculations for all effect sizes; (3) The addition of single-case design (SCD) procedures for synthesizing SCD study findings using design-comparable effect sizes; (4) The addition of procedures to estimate effects from regression discontinuity designs (RDDs); (5) Clarification of decision rules determining the use of difference-in-difference effect sizes; (6) The synthesis of studies within intervention reports using a fixed-effects model; (7) The modification of the intervention report effectiveness rating; and (8) Levels of evidence in practice guides. The remainder of this handbook is organized as follows: Chapter II describes the steps that the WWC uses to develop a review protocol. Chapter III describes how the WWC identifies the relevant literature. Chapter IV describes the screening process to determine whether a study is eligible for review, and chapter V describes the procedures used to review eligible studies. Chapter VI describes how the WWC summarizes evidence of effectiveness. Organizational procedures used by the WWC to ensure an independent, systematic, and objective review are described in the appendices. As the WWC uses and applies the procedures in this "Procedures Handbook," reviewers and other WWC staff may occasionally need additional guidance. If necessary, the WWC will produce guidance documents to provide clarification and interpretation of WWC procedures. [For version 4.0 of this handbook, see ED577035.] [For "Supplement to the What Works Clearinghouse Procedures Handbook, Version 4.1," see ED608943.]

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects institution-level data from postsecondary institutions in the United States (50 states and the District of Columbia) and other U.S. jurisdictions. This "First Look" presents findings from the provisional data of the IPEDS winter 2016-17 data collection, which included five survey components: "Graduation Rates," "200 Percent Graduation Rates," "Student Financial Aid," "Admissions," and "Outcome Measures." Data for these components were collected through the IPEDS web-based data collection system. Though fielded during the same collection period, each survey component collected data on different groups of individuals (e.g., cohorts starting at a specific time). A brief summary of the winter 2016-17 survey components is included in this report, and data collection procedures are summarized in appendix A. This "First Look" provides users with access to fully reviewed, edited, and imputed IPEDS data. These provisional data are an update to the previously released preliminary data, which were not extensively reviewed or edited. Final data, including revisions to the provisional data submitted by institutions after the close of data collection, will be available during the next collection year (2017-18). The purpose of this report is to introduce new data through tables containing descriptive information such as totals, averages, and percentages. The findings presented here demonstrate the range of information available through IPEDS; they include only a sample of the information collected. A glossary of IPEDS terms is provided. [For the previous version of this report, see ED576673.]

This document provides guidance on the research, policies, and practices necessary for appropriate development and implementation of student growth goals, which are often referred to as Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). Over the past few years, federal and state education policies have shifted to require teachers to set SLOs with the intention of strengthening accountability for improving student outcomes. These goals are typically part of a teacher evaluation process that combines a teacher's attainment of SLOs with observations of the teacher's performance. The creation of meaningful SLOs is not a simple endeavor and requires: (1) An understanding of how setting goals can improve teacher performance; (2) A moderate level of assessment literacy for teachers and administrators; (3) A commitment to collaborative discussions between teachers and principals within the SLO-setting process; and (4) A similar level of challenge across all the SLOs created, as well as similarity between the difficulty of SLOs and difficulty of achieving the results determined by other means (e.g., value-added ratings generated with state test data). Research shows that high-quality goals have two defining characteristics: (1) Specificity: how specific the goal is and what the goal is specifying; and (2) Difficulty: a combination of what a teacher's target is and how long the teacher has to achieve it. Based on the existing research, NWEA has three broad recommendations that educators should consider in the development of SLOs: (1) Student learning should be the priority; (2) Teachers and administrators should have adequate assessment knowledge; and (3) Each classroom situation should be treated uniquely while recognizing the need to have similar expectations for all teachers. By implementing this guidance, the SLOs created and used as a portion of a teacher's evaluation will be fairer to teachers, yield overall improvement in teacher performance, and ultimately have a greater likelihood of improving the rate of learning for the teachers' students.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) systematic review process is the basis of many of its products, enabling the WWC to use consistent, objective, and transparent standards and procedures in its reviews, while also ensuring comprehensive coverage of the relevant literature. The WWC systematic review process consists of five steps: (1) Developing the review protocol; (2) Identifying relevant literature; (3) Screening studies; (4) Reviewing studies; and (5) Reporting on findings. A separate "What Works Clearinghouse Standards Handbook" (ED577036) describes Step 4, including the standards used by the WWC to review studies and assign one of the following three study ratings indicating the credibility of evidence from the study: "Meets WWC Design Standards Without Reservations," "Meets WWC Design Standards With Reservations," or "Does Not Meet WWC Design Standards." Taken together, these two documents replace the single document used since March 2014, the "What Works Clearinghouse Procedures and Standards Handbook (Version 3.0)." Figure I.1 shows how the steps of the WWC systematic review process are divided between the two Handbooks. In general, this new "Procedures Handbook" contains the same procedures that were included in the "Procedures and Standards Handbook (Version 3.0)." However, in addition to changes to the organization, the following substantive updates were made: (1) The "Handbook" includes additional information that can be specified in review protocols. This additional information may be needed because of updates to the "WWC Standards Handbook" or to take into account methodological considerations that may vary by topic area; (2) The "Handbook" includes additional clarification of procedures. The additional clarification of the procedures is intended to support consistency across reviews, and includes new discussion of how the WWC defines studies and conducts its correction for multiple comparisons within studies; (3) The "Handbook" includes updated formulas for calculating statistical significance of findings. The formula for continuous outcomes includes a new small sample size adjustment, and a separate formula is provided for dichotomous outcomes; and (4) The "Handbook" includes procedures for reporting findings from randomized controlled trials that present complier average causal effects. A new appendix describes how the WWC reports findings and statistical significance from studies with complier average causal effect estimates to examine the effects of intervention participation rather than intervention assignment. The remainder of the document is organized as follows: Chapter II describes the steps that the WWC uses to develop a review protocol. Chapter III describes how the WWC identifies the relevant literature. Chapter IV describes the screening process to determine if a study is eligible for review, and Chapter V describes the procedures used to review eligible studies. Chapter VI describes how the WWC summarizes evidence of effectiveness. Organizational procedures used by the WWC to ensure an independent, systematic, and objective review are described in the appendices. As the WWC uses and applies the procedures in this "Procedures Handbook," reviewers may occasionally need additional guidance. If necessary, the WWC will produce guidance documents for reviewers to provide clarification and interpretation of procedures and support consistency across reviews. This WWC reviewer guidance will clarify how these procedures should be implemented in situations where the current "Procedures Handbook" is not sufficiently specific to ensure consistent reviews. As the WWC continues to refine and develop procedures, the "Procedures Handbook" will be revised to reflect these changes. [See ED544775 to review the previous version of this guide. ]

Some schools use results from the MAP® Growth™ interim assessments from Northwest Evaluation Association® (NWEA®) in a number of high-stakes ways. These include as a component of their teacher evaluation systems, to determine whether a student advances to the next grade, or as an indicator for student readiness for certain programs or interventions (such as special education or gifted and talented programs). Therefore, guidance is needed about how to protect the integrity of the testing process and the test results. NWEA offers these guidelines based on their current research and experience with school districts using NWEA's tests for high-stakes purposes. These recommendations provide school leaders and test administrators with guidance about key issues that should be considered when using MAP Growth test results from NWEA as a factor in high-stakes decisions about schools, educators, or students. These recommendations should also be viewed as important testing practices even if test results are not used for high-stakes purposes. These recommendations will help to improve the overall reliability and validity of student test scores. NWEA recommends that schools or districts should strongly consider implementing three broad policies: (1) Schools or districts should develop a written policy at the start of the year that clearly outlines expectations for teachers and students throughout the testing process; (2) These policies should be understood by all teachers prior to the first test administration, allowing teachers the opportunity to seek clarifications about the testing policies, which may be different than when the NWEA assessments were used in a low-stakes capacity; and (3) Consistency is the key. These policies should be enforced at all test administration periods and should be the same for all teachers in the school.

The future of work is changing, providing opportunities for new careers and novel ways of working. Changes to the world of work will be driven by long-term trends such as technological and demographic change as well as the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future skills requirements will increasingly emphasise interpersonal, higher-order cognitive skills (such as fluency of ideas and active learning) and systems skills (such as judgement and decision making). The future workforce will need a combination of broad-based and specialised knowledge and there is currently limited evidence of 'what works' to support people to build these skills and support them into new careers. This evaluation toolkit has been developed by Learning and Work Institute (L&W) based on their experience as the evaluation partner on the Nesta and Department for Education CareerTech Challenge in 2020/21, a £5.75 million programme to encourage bold solutions to improve people's working lives and unlock employment opportunities for the future. Since March 2020, L&W have been working closely with 11 innovators to evaluate the effectiveness of their digital and online learning solutions in building career adaptability skills and learner motivation amongst people who are working in shrinking sectors and occupations. The toolkit is designed to support delivery organisations, developers and providers to consider the best ways to evaluate online learning interventions designed to support adults to build skills that support their careers. Through a collection of case studies, checklists, templates and question banks, this toolkit provides advice on how to evaluate interventions with a step-by-step guide to developing realistic, proportionate and high quality plans for an evaluation. [This report was co-produced with Nesta (United Kingdom) for the CareerTech Challenge.]

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) has developed an extensive data system that captures the wages earned by graduates of public colleges and universities, by major. The board then makes those data available, providing a highly detailed look at the wages of completers at various points between 1 and 10 years after attaining a postsecondary credential. Through its partnership with College Measures, THECB ensures that its rich data on the wage outcomes of students are not merely available, but that the data can be used to inform real-world decisions. The website for College Measures Texas (tx.edpays.org) allows students to learn about wage outcomes by major, both within and across institutions. The data also allow students to compare the returns on different levels of credentials. This report highlights key findings from College Measures' look at the wages earned by completers from public colleges and universities in Texas. The report focuses on the wage outcomes associated with different "levels" of postsecondary credentials 1 and 10 years after completion and the wage outcomes across different majors. Students can use this information to make better informed decisions about what to study and where to study it, about which level of degree may be best for their goals and aspirations, and about how much money to borrow to help finance their education.

On March 22, 2016, the New Jersey Department of Education ("the Department") published a broadcast memo sharing secure district access to 2014-15 median Student Growth Percentile (mSGP) data for all qualifying teachers. These data describe student growth from the last school year, and comprise 10% of qualifying teachers' 2014-15 evaluations. This guide explains how mSGP scores are calculated and used and includes an overview of the following components: (1) The Use of Growth Measures; (2) Calculating SGP from the NJ ASK to the PARCC Exam; (3) Qualifications for Receiving mSGP Data; (4) Calculation of mSGP Scores and Conversion to Evaluation Scores; (5) Understanding the Individual Teacher mSGP Report; (6) Suggestions for Sharing and Effectively Using mSGP Data; (7) Certifying mSGP Data and the Summative Rating; and (8) Additional Resources and Contact Information.

The social sector's hottest "impact investing" product--the social impact bond (SIB)--has generated a range of reactions, from excitement to angst. An SIB uses private funds to pay for a social, educational, or health program, and the government repays investors (plus a return) only if the program achieves prespecified results. The intervention financed by the first social impact bond in the United States--the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) program at Rikers Island jail in New York City--was discontinued after three years when results from an independent evaluation demonstrated that it was not meeting its goal of reducing recidivism among 16- to 18-year-olds. As president of MDRC--the organization that was the "intermediary" at the center of the Rikers deal--Gordon Berlin thinks it is important that the field not learn the wrong lessons from the experience. Instead, emerging lessons from the Rikers deal and others reveal both SIBs' value to government entities and also the reality that this value will only be realized if the tensions inherent in structuring the terms of an SIB deal can be addressed squarely. These lessons include: (1) the balance of risk and reward; (2) the focus on government savings; (3) the tyranny of SIB metrics; and (4) the role of evidence. This paper draws on lessons from the implementation of the ABLE program and the handful of other SIBs with actual operating experience to provide valuable insights into the inner workings of SIB deals, using ABLE as a vehicle for explaining both the challenges and the potential of SIBs. It provides an overview of the SIB promise, and briefly describes the ABLE project. The paper frames critical decisions and identifies central tensions in the design of a deal, including the unique requirements of due diligence in an SIB project, and walks through the steps involved in structuring a deal, showing how the tensions inherent in the SIB mechanism must be confronted. Recommendations for moving beyond a series of "bespoke" deals to effective, ongoing programs operating on a large scale, whether through sustained government funding or through the creation of functioning capital markets that afford a continuing role for private investors, especially philanthropies, are included.

"Schools at a Glance" provides, in a single document, information about enrollment, staffing, facilities, programs, outcome measures, and personnel costs for each school. Information on personnel costs for each school includes position salaries for professional and supporting services employees and employee benefits costs related to positions. Summaries of the data for the county and by level (elementary, middle, high, and special schools) also are included. [This publication is the result of the efforts of several offices within Montgomery County Public Schools: Officer of the Chief Operating Officer--Department of Facilities Management and Department of Management, Budget, and Planning; Office of the Chief Academic Officer; Office of the Chief Technology Officer; Office of Curriculum and Instructional Programs; Office of the Deputy Superintendent of School Support and Improvement; Office of Shared Accountability; and the Office of Special Education and Student Services. For the 2014-2015 report, see ED557707.]

This discussion guide is part of a larger practice guide designed to help state education agencies (SEAs) define measurement goals, select college and career readiness measures and indicators designed to support those goals, and use the data gathered with those measures and indicators to make informed decisions about college and career readiness policies, programs, and interventions. The chapter 1 discussion guide focuses on setting the stage for the rest of the guide by defining the measurement landscape and exploring the SEA role in measurement goals related to college and career readiness and success.

Minnesota Reading Corps (MRC) is the largest AmeriCorps State program in the country. The goal of MRC is to ensure that students become successful readers and meet reading proficiency targets by the end of the third grade. Starting in 2011, the "Corporation for National and Community Service" (CNCS) sponsored a randomized controlled trial (RCT) impact evaluation of over 1,300 K-3 students at 23 participating schools who were determined to be eligible for the MRC program during the 2012-2013 school year. The goal of the impact evaluation was to determine both the short- and long-term impacts of the MRC program on elementary students' literacy outcomes. This report of separate appendices include: Logic Model for the Process and Impact Evaluation of MRC; Illustration of the Randomization Process; Findings from Sensitivity Analysis; School Names Corresponding to School Codes; Detailed Methodology; Fall-Winter Models and Effects Tables; Findings from Robustness Analysis; IES What Works Clearinghouse Analysis; Full Year Models and Effects Tables; and the Glossary. [For the full report, see ED560018.]

To assist system administrators as they pursue their own teacher leadership initiatives, this profile from Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute details the steps Denver Public Schools (DPS) took to design and implement its Differentiated Roles pilot. Specifically, it examines the initiative's opportunities and challenges within the context of the blueprint for teacher leadership that were proposed in "Leading from The Front of the Classroom: A Roadmap to Teacher Leadership that Works". That blueprint provides a guide for implementing teacher leadership that advances student achievement, and it highlights key phases for system administrators to navigate as they leverage teacher leadership to address their highest priorities. To build teacher leadership that works, system administrators need to clarify the purpose of teacher leadership-what Aspen Institute calls designing for impact. Concurrently, Aspen advises leaders to know their context in order to address potential challenges and opportunities. To ensure deliberate, strategic leadership development, systems must then define the measures before implementation begins and monitor progress throughout implementation. Finally, systems need to build strategically by designing clear teacher leader roles and responsibilities. This includes effective selection and training processes for teacher leaders as well as strategies for supporting principals and principal managers throughout the changes of roles and responsibilities. Central to the blueprint is the idea that effective teacher leadership marries form with function in order to create transformative change in schools. Function, means that the teacher leadership initiatives are not isolated programs but are integral in advancing other pressing priorities. Form means that the teacher leader roles themselves are clearly defined with sufficient time, support, and resources to be effective. DPS' Differentiated Roles pilot provides an opportunity to evaluate the blueprint in action. After discussing the district's efforts to identify a function for teacher leadership that advanced its top priorities, the profile considers how DPS aligned its resources to support the pilot, its approach to defining measures and methods for monitoring performance, and its process for strategically building and implementing its teacher leader roles.[To access "Leading from The Front of the Classroom: A Roadmap to Teacher Leadership that Works" see ED553639. This paper was written with the writing and editing contributions of Walter Stern, Chong-Hao Fu, Maria Bourgeois, and Steph Bates.]

In the summer of 2012, thousands of teachers across the United States attended several days of professional development workshops. The workshops, which focused on the Common Core State Standards, were part of a Tennessee Department of Education initiative in teacher leadership. The department recruited and trained 200 highly-effective teachers to guide its implementation of the new, more rigorous academic framework, and 13,000 educators learned from these "Core Coaches" in the summer of 2012. The coaches also served as resources for their schools, districts, and regions during the school year. When describing the Core Coach initiative, Tennessee education officials and practitioners paint a picture of cyclical reform. By empowering a select group of coaches to lead the Common Core implementation, the state sought to build a pool of instructional leaders who could support other teachers while becoming better teachers themselves, as well as more influential leaders. Along the way, the thinking went, they would help more and more teachers improve as well, resulting in improved instructional quality across the state. The state's experience highlights the opportunities and challenges of leveraging teacher leadership to drive state-level change. To assist system administrators as they pursue their own teacher leadership initiatives, this profile from Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute details the steps Tennessee took to design and implement its Common Core Coach initiative. Specifically, it examines the initiative's opportunities and challenges within the context of a blueprint for teacher leadership. That blueprint provides a guide for implementing teacher leadership that advances student achievement, and it highlights key phases for system administrators to navigate as they leverage teacher leadership to address their highest priorities. Phases include: (1) Designing for Impact; (2) Leaders are advised to know their content; (3) Measures should be clearly defined before implementation; and (4) Systems should build strategically by designing clear teacher leader roles and responsibilities. Central to the blueprint is the idea that effective teacher leadership marries form with function in order to create transformative change in schools.[This paper would not be possible without the writing and editing contributions of Walter Stern, Chong-Hao Fu, Maria Bourgeois, and Steph Bates.]

The Developmental Strategies for College Readiness and Success Resource Guide was produced by the Education Commission of the States and the Southern Regional Education Board for the "Countdown to 2015: Developmental Strategies to Advance Readiness in the Common Core Era" convening held April 21-23, 2014 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The meeting was the culmination of a project between the Community College Research Center, Complete College America, Education Commission of the States, Education First and the Southern Regional Education Board. The meeting brought together 10 state teams, consisting of policy leaders and K-12 and higher education officials, committed to improving college readiness for all students. The overarching goal was to help states develop action plans to ensure that significantly more students are prepared for postsecondary education, complete entry-level college courses and persist toward credential completion. This challenge will become even more apparent in 2015 when the results of the first full administration of new assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards are released. The Resource Guide summarizes information about developmental models, research and examples of state policies and institutional practices. The guide is designed to help policymakers and postsecondary leaders and practitioners identify and implement strategies that will improve college readiness and completion in their states.

The New York State Board of Regents has committed to the transformation of the preparation, support and evaluation of all teachers and school leaders in New York State, and the New York State Legislature has enacted historic legislation (Education Law §3012-c) that fundamentally changes the way teachers and principals are evaluated. Under the new law, New York State will differentiate teacher and principal effectiveness using four rating categories--Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, and Ineffective. Education Law §3012-c(2)(a) requires annual professional performance reviews (APPRs) to result in a single composite teacher or principal effectiveness score that incorporates multiple measures of effectiveness. The results of the evaluations shall be a significant factor in employment decisions, including but not limited to promotion, retention, tenure determination, termination, and supplemental compensation, as well as teacher and principal professional development (including coaching, induction support, and differentiated professional development). The law specifies that student performance will comprise 40% of teacher and principal evaluations. For teachers where there is no State-provided measure of student growth, "comparable measures" are the State-determined District-wide growth goal-setting process. Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) are the State-determined process. A Student Learning Objective is an academic goal for a teacher's students that is set at the start of a course. It represents the most important learning for the year (or, semester, where applicable). It must be specific and measurable, based on available prior student learning data, and aligned to Common Core, State, or national standards, as well as any other school and District priorities. Teachers' scores are based upon the degree to which their goals were attained. This report provides background information about SLOs, describes SLO rules and considerations for comparable growth measures, discusses scoring SLOs and determining final ratings for comparable growth measures, outlines major district steps to plan and implement SLOs as comparable growth measures, discusses SLOs as an option for locally-selected measures of student achievement, and includes sample SLO scoring models for comparable growth measures. Definitions of key terms are appended.

The purpose of "Branding your Post-School Outcomes Data Collection Process" is to help state education agencies create brand recognition with youths, families, and school personnel for the post-school outcomes survey. Recognition--paired with information about the survey purpose, who is conducting the interview, and how the information will be used--contributes to response rates that better represent youths who exited school. Presented here are the following: (1) Steps for branding your post-school outcomes survey; (2) A sample letter and flyer for youths exiting high school telling them about the survey and that they may be contacted in one year; (3) A sample letter for youths exiting high school telling them about the survey and that they may be contacted in one year; (4) A sample prenotification postcard to be delivered (i.e., mailed or e-mailed) one to two weeks prior to the survey being administered; (5) Directions for accessing templates for each item that can be personalized for your state or district; and (6) Instructions for using the templates to personalize each of these items for your state or district

Seven district improvement initiatives were implemented in 2011-12 in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS). All were well designed and coordinated, with common goal setting processes and use of common monitoring tools. All initiatives either met or partially met 2011-12 goals. Some were more successful in showing student outcomes, with the most positive initiatives being elementary mathematics and adolescent literacy. These results should be used to influence future decisions about continuation or strengthening of these efforts. New components that were well received and implemented by those trained (but which did not have achievement results as yet) should also be considered for future funding. Appended are: (1) SIOP® Training and 6 Tables; (2) LEA AYP Results; (3) Elementary Math Coach Initiative with Results and Elementary Math Outcomes; (4) Differentiation Training Modules; (5) Implementation of the 2010-11 Evaluation Recommendations.

Social return on investment (SROI) analysis offers a practical new approach for measuring and communicating the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and educational services to children and their families. This guide highlights the key steps in conducting SROI research, issues in data-gathering and analysis, as well as lessons learned from a case study of two New York City community schools: (1) PS 5; and (2) Salomé Ureña. The guide also helps educators and community leaders understand how to present and use SROI findings to make a strong case for investments to sustain and scale up these promising education reform initiatives. The following are appended: (1) Data Inventory Worksheet; and (2) Financial Proxies by Outcome. [For the full study "Measuring Social Return on Investment for Community Schools: A Case Study," see ED561996.]

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of high-quality instructional and formative assessment tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Lessons from the first generation of standards-based reforms suggest that intense attention to high quality instructional tasks (City, Elmore, Fairman, & Teitel, 2010; Hiebert and Carpenter, 1992; Hiebert and Wearne, 1993; Jones et al, 1994) and use of formative assessments embedded in those tasks (Black et al, 2004; Clarke and Shinn, 2004; Fuchs, 2004; Tunstall, 1996) are essential if teachers are to meet the demands of the CCSS. Experts from the Shell Centre have developed a set of Formative Assessment Lessons (Lessons) for secondary mathematics teachers to facilitate CCSS-based student mathematics learning and provide teachers with feedback about student understanding and mastery. The tools are designed to target the "instructional core" by: (1) Raising the level of content; (2) Enhancing teachers' skill and knowledge about instruction, content and formative assessment; (3) Catalyzing student engagement in their learning so that they will achieve at high levels (Elmore, 2010). These tools have been in use for two years (2010-2011 and 2011-2012 schools years). This brief highlights and assesses the status of elements of robust implementation of the MDC tools, which are represented by the small blue circles in the Theory of Action. These six indicators, which fall into two main categories--Teacher Beliefs and Knowledge and Classroom Changes--are instrumental in understanding teachers' disposition towards the tools and their perceptions of how their instruction and student learning have changed as a result of their participation in the MDC initiative. Robust implementation should lead to several intermediate and long-term outcomes, among them Broad and Deep Instructional Change. The authors present their findings for this outcome as well. They provide a brief overview of data sources and then examine: (1) the three indicators of robust implementation related to teacher beliefs and knowledge; (2) the three indicators of robust implementation related to classroom changes; and (3) signs of broad and deep instructional change. Brief 3 closes with recommendations and questions. (Contains 22 figures and 3 footnotes.)

Math experts developed Formative Assessment Lessons that teachers can incorporate throughout the year's curriculum. Both tools target the "instructional core." A study by Research for Action (RFA) examining the first year of piloting the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and Math Design Collaborative (MDC) tools (2010-11) found evidence of initial success in tool use indicated by teachers' perceptions that the tools positively influenced teacher practice. In the second year of the Initiative (2011-12), tool use grew within and across sites. The focus of the research has expanded accordingly to include an analysis of how the tools are being introduced to additional classrooms, schools and districts, and what strategies are most effective in sustaining and strengthening tool use. This brief focuses on efforts to scale up and sustain broader use of the tools. It begins with an introduction in which "scale-up and sustainability" is defined, providing the framework for this brief. The introduction also provides detail on the extent to which use of the tools has grown within study sites, both in terms of additional teachers/schools/districts/networks, and in terms of the greater integration of the tools into teachers' practice. In addition, the authors provide a review of the theory of action driving the LDC/MDC Initiative, highlighting the underlying conditions necessary for robust implementation to occur. The second section of the brief presents findings on the extent to which the supporting conditions necessary for robust LDC/MDC tool implementation--alignment, leadership and professional learning opportunities--are in evidence at the various study sites. The final section of the brief offers suggestions for supporting enhanced and expanded LDC/MDC tool implementation. Findings in this brief draw on observations of teachers and professional development providers, interview data from tools developers and professional development providers, and interview and survey data from teachers, school administrators, district/regional and network leadership, and state-level policymakers/partners. (Contains 28 figures and 4 footnotes.)

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of high-quality instructional and formative assessment tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Lessons from the first generation of standards-based reforms suggest that intense attention to high quality instructional tasks (City, Elmore, Fiarman, & Teitel, 2010; Hiebert and Carpenter, 1992; Hiebert and Wearne, 1993; Jones et al, 1994) and use of formative assessments embedded in those tasks (Black et al, 2004; Clarke and Shinn, 2004; Fuchs, 2004; Tunstall, 1996) are essential if teachers are to meet the demands of the CCSS. Experts from the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) developed a set of templates that can be customized by English/language arts (ELA), social studies and science teachers into writing tasks designed to facilitate CCSS-based student literacy and content learning and provide teachers with feedback about student mastery. LDC also developed a module structure that teachers can use to create a plan for teaching students the content and literacy skills necessary to complete the writing task. The tools are designed to target the "instructional core" by: (1) Raising the level of content; (2) Enhancing teachers' skill and knowledge about instruction, content and formative assessment; and (3) Catalyzing student engagement in their learning so that they will achieve at high levels (City et al., 2010). These tools have been in use for two years (the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years). This brief highlights and assesses the status of elements of robust implementation of the LDC tools, which are represented by the small blue circles in the Theory of Action. These six indicators, which fall into two main categories--Teacher Beliefs and Knowledge and Classroom Changes--are instrumental in understanding teachers' disposition towards the tools and their perceptions of how their instruction and student learning have changed as a result of their participation in the LDC initiative. Robust implementation should lead to several intermediate and long-term outcomes, among them Broad and Deep Instructional Change. The authors present their findings for this outcome as well. (Contains 17 figures and 6 footnotes.)

The Federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA), Title II: Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) provides funding for states and territories to provide instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL), Adult Basic Education (ABE), and Adult Secondary Education (ASE) to adults in need of these literacy services. California State Budget Act language for fiscal year 2010-11 (Item 6110-156-0890, Provision 3) requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to report on the implementation of the WIA, Title II. Fiscal year 2010-11 represents the twelfth year of WIA, Title II implementation. Two major implementation goals are to: (1) increase performance outcomes and (2) increase student success in transitions to postsecondary education and to the workforce. The WIA, Title II multiyear grants are funded on a pay-for-performance basis. California's federal funding allocation plan is based on documented student performance and goal attainment in educational programs. Each year California uses the student performance data to negotiate performance goals with the U.S. Department of Education (ED), Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) for 11 literacy levels within the program areas of ABE, ASE, and ESL, and the four core follow-up outcome measures of: (1) entered employment; (2) retained employment; (3) entered postsecondary education or training; and (4) attained a GED certificate or high school diploma. The literacy level performance goals are based on the percentage of all enrollees who complete a literacy level within the program year. The core follow-up outcome measures are based on the percentage of adult learners who identify specific goals for their enrollment and achieve their goals after exiting the program. Appended are: (1) Progress Measures; (2) WIA Title II Enrollments and Performance; (3) CASAS Skill Level Descriptors for ABE and ASE; and (4) CASAS Skill Level Descriptors for ESL. (Contains 1 footnote.) [For the 2010 edition of this report, see ED540985.]

With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CRESST conducted a multi-year evaluation of a major school reform project at Alain Leroy Locke High School, historically one of California's lowest performing secondary schools. Beginning in 2007, Locke High School transitioned into a set of smaller, Green Dot Charter High Schools, subsequently referred to as Green Dot Locke (GDL) in this report. Based on 9th grade students who entered GDL in 2007 and 2008 respectively, CRESST used a range of student outcomes to monitor progress of the GDL transformation. The CRESST evaluation, employing a strong quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching, found statistically significant, positive effects for the GDL transformation including improved achievement, school persistence, and completion of college preparatory courses. Appended are: (1) Demographic Characteristics and Achievement of the Freshmen at GDL and LAUSD; (2) Cohort Specific Descriptives; and (3) General Descriptives. (Contains 17 figures, 43 tables and 6 footnotes.)

Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) is funded by the Proposition 10 ballot initiative to support services for children prenatal to age five in California. The state revenue comes from an extra 50-cent tax on tobacco products, and is distributed according to the proportion of live births in each county. Following a Statewide Evaluation Framework (First 5 California, 2005), the 2010-11 Annual Report includes multilevel evaluation findings to show what works, for whom, and in which context of early childhood development in Kern County. At the first level, descriptive data are examined to support fact findings on service counts. In addition, value-added assessments are incorporated at the second level to articulate outcome measures in support of the local priority setting. At the third level, longitudinal data are analyzed for those programs receiving funding during adjacent years of 2009-2011 to track improvement of sustainable accomplishments beyond the cycle of annual reporting. Altogether this report has addressed the results-based accountability required by Proposition 10. At a county covering a land area as large as the state of New Jersey, this report also served as a model of evaluation for 58 county commissions across the golden state. Two appendixes are included: (1) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC); and (2) IRB Approval. (Contains 14 footnotes, 27 tables, 55 figures, and 3 exhibits.)

The Student Outcomes Survey is an annual national survey of vocational education and training (VET) students. Since 1995, participants have been asked to rate their satisfaction with different aspects of their training, grouped under three main themes: teaching, assessment, and generic skills and learning experiences. While the composition of the bank of satisfaction questions has remained fairly constant over time and the suitability of the three overarching satisfaction categories has been validated statistically on several occasions, little progress has been made on creating summary measures that encapsulate the three main themes of student satisfaction. Such summary measures would be much more useful to researchers than responses to the bank of 19 satisfaction questions, which are very detailed. This paper compares three methods of creating a composite score and evaluates their statistical veracity. These methods are Rasch analysis, weighted means and simple means. This report finds that all three methods yield similar results and so recommends using the simple means method to create the summary measures. (Contains 7 tables, 2 figures and 2 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided through the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.]

Educational improvement can be measured over time and against benchmarks in four key areas: (1) mastery of basic reading and math skills; (2) high school completion; (3) preparation for postsecondary education; and (4) adult educational attainment. The first three reflect how the school system prepares students for postsecondary education. The fourth key area measures the results of that preparation and the impact on economic indicators such as employment, income and poverty. None of these measures are entirely the result of the school system. Schools have only limited control over the circumstances, motivation and abilities of their students. Students are frequently mobile and therefore the exact same students cannot be measured as they move through and exit the system, especially as adults. In addition, there are many important aspects of education that cannot be easily or consistently measured. However, this is enough data to draw the following important conclusions: (1) Kansas students have improved mastery of basic reading and math on both state and national tests over the past decade; (2) Kansas students rank in the top for all students and for low income students, who traditionally have lower academic performance; (3) Comparing similar systems and students, Kansas public schools do as well or better than private schools in Kansas and nationally; (4) Kansas has made progress closing the achievement gap among student groups. Programs targeted for at-risk students are working effectively; (5) High school completion has been rising for decades, and Kansas has improved its high school graduation rate in the past decade; (6) Schools are preparing more students for college than in the past. Kansas scores for college-bound students rank in the top 10 of all states and have improved over the past 15 years; (7) Kansas adult educational attainment has been rising since the 1940s and consistently tops the national average; (8) The economic value of increasing educational attainment is significant for both individuals and states; (9) Kansas school districts have produced top 10 educational results with per pupil spending near the national average. The state's educational outcomes have increased without spending a larger share of state personal income; and (10) Kansas has fewer at-risk students than many states, but has more at-risk students than other high achieving states, and the number of at-risk students is increasing.

The Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation in 2007 requiring that the State Board of Education produce an assessment on the effectiveness of teacher training programs. The law requires that the report includes data on the performance of each program's graduates in the following areas: placement and retention rates, Praxis II results, and teacher effect data based on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) scores. This year's report card includes several additional indicators for each program; more information on the changes and additions can be found in the following section. The information contained herein is to establish a baseline for teacher training programs and for the public to evaluate and review program effectiveness, based on specific measures of quality as defined by Tennessee Code Annotated 49-5-108. The following changes have been put into effect for the 2011 report: (1) The individual program reports include a summary page with information about the teacher training program as well as demographic and academic information on program completers; (2) The program reports also include a map of where the most recent cohort of completers is currently teaching; (3) There are additional documents to help the reader understand the data--the "Glossary of Terms and How to Read the Program Reports"; (4) The Executive Summary includes specific findings from the data; (5) There is now a Tennessee State Profile with statewide data and program comparisons; and (6) Teacher training programs reported student data directly to THEC, ensuring that programs have the ability to accurately claim completers. Appended are: (1) Technical Report provided by the SAS Institute; and (2) Teacher Effect Tables. A glossary of terms is included. Individual sections contain footnotes. [For the 2010 report, "Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs," see ED514363.]

The Federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA), Title II: Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) provide funding for states and territories to provide instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL), Adult Basic Education (ABE), and Adult Secondary Education (ASE) to adults in need of these literacy services. California State Budget Act language for fiscal year 2009-10 (Item 6110-156-0890 provision 3) requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to report on the implementation of the WIA, Title II. Fiscal year 2009-10 represents the eleventh year of WIA, Title II implementation. Two major implementation goals are to: (1) increase performance outcomes; (2) increase student success in transitions to postsecondary education and to the workforce. The WIA, Title II multiyear grants are funded on a pay-for-performance basis. California's federal funding allocation plan is based on documented student performance and goal attainment in educational programs. It requires all agencies to collect the following information on all students for whom they receive federal funding: (1) Demographic and educational program information; (2) Individual student progress and learning gains in the literacy skill levels of reading, writing, and speaking, the English language, numeracy, English language acquisition; and other literacy skills; and (3) Student outcomes, including the completion of a General Educational Development (GED) Test certificate, attainment of a high school diploma, acquisition or retention of unsubsidized employment, and entered postsecondary education or training. Each year, California uses the student performance data to negotiate performance goals with the U.S. Department of Education (ED), Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), for eleven literacy levels within the program areas of ABE, ASE, and ESL, and the four core follow-up outcome measures of: (1) entered employment; (2) retained employment; (3) entered postsecondary education or training; and (4) attained a GED certificate or high school diploma. The literacy level performance goals are based on the percentage of all enrollees who complete a literacy level within the program year. The core follow-up outcome measures are based on the percentage of adult learners who identify specific goals for their enrollment and achieve their goals after exiting the program. Appended are: (1) Progress Measures; (2) WIA Title II Enrollments and Performance; (3) CASAS Skill Level Descriptors for ABE and ASE; and (4) CASAS Skill Level Descriptors for ESL. (Contains 2 footnotes.) [For the 2009 edition of this report, see ED540984.]

There is much debate on the merits and pitfalls of standardized tests for college admission, with questions regarding the format (multiple-choice versus constructed response), cognitive complexity, and content of these assessments (achievement versus aptitude) at the forefront of the discussion. This study addressed these questions by investigating the relationship between SAT Mathematics (SAT-M) item characteristics and the item's ability to predict college outcomes. Using multiple regression, SAT-M item characteristics (content area, format, cognitive complexity, and abstract/concrete classification) were used to predict three outcome measures: the correlation of item score with first-year college grade point average (FYGPA), the correlation of item score with mathematics course grades, and the percentage of students who answered the item correctly and chose to major in a mathematics or science (STEM) field. Separate models were run including and excluding item difficulty and discrimination as covariates. The results revealed that many of the item characteristics were related to the outcome measures, and that item difficulty and discrimination had a mediating effect on several of the predictor variables, particularly on the effects of non-routine/insightful items, and multiple-choice items. [Slides presented at AERA 2011.]

Key stakeholders who implement Supported Education may find themselves asking two questions: (1) Has Supported Education been implemented as planned?; and (2) Has Supported Education resulted in the expected outcomes? Asking these two questions and using the answers to help improve Supported Education are critical for ensuring the success of one's program. "Evaluating Your Program" shows quality assurance team members how to evaluate the effectiveness of Supported Education. It includes the following: (1) A Readiness Assessment; (2) The Supported Education Fidelity Scale; and (3) Outcome measures that are specific to Supported Education. Readers will also find instructions for conducting assessments and tips on how to use the data to improve one's program. Appended are: (1) Cover Sheet--Supported Education Fidelity Scale; (2) Supported Education Fidelity Scale and Scoresheet; (3) Supported Education Fidelity Scale Protocol; (4) Outcomes Report Form; (5) Instructions for the Outcomes Report Form; and (6) Assessor Training and Work Performance Checklist. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

Cities around the country are building systems that seek to make the most of public and private resources to provide widespread, high-quality, out-of-school time opportunities. Local officials are leading these efforts because participation in OST programs not only benefits young people but also the cities in which they live, with the potential to support many city priorities--from reducing crime to creating a more skilled workforce. However, even with growing public awareness of the importance of OST as a learning and developmental support, millions of children, especially the neediest, are missing out on these opportunities, with an estimated 15.1 million children returning to an empty house at the end of the school day. This guide provides municipal leaders and their key partners with strategies for collecting and using information to strengthen citywide OST systems. The six strategies presented here are intended to help build the capacity of communities to get and use information across a citywide system: (1) Collect attendance and participation information to support access, enrollment and quality improvements; (2) Conduct market research to assess family, youth and community needs; (3) Use geographic information system (GIS) technology to identify service gaps and improve access; (4) Develop, adapt and implement a citywide program quality assessment tool; (5) Conduct and support program and city-level evaluation efforts; and (6) Develop common, system-wide outcome measures/indicators. (Contains 3 footnotes and 14 resources.)

The Guam Department of Education (DOE) is a single unified school district consisting of grades Kindergarten through 12. Its 27 elementary schools, 8 middle schools, 5 high schools, and an alternative school serve over 30,700 students. DOE is managed by the Guam Education Policy Board. Its policies are established by a combination of elected and Governor-appointed board members. This paper presents the following information on DOE: (1) Performance Measures; (2) Financial Information; and (3) Future Outlook.

As part of Phase 3 of the Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study (UPCOS-3), Mathematica Policy Research worked with the First 5 LA Children and Families Commission and Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP) to conduct a descriptive study of the characteristics of classrooms in LAUP programs during winter 2010. This study has a particular focus on the specific instructional practices used to support English language learners (ELLs) in LAUP's center-based and family child care programs. The study includes two key components: (1) classroom observations using measures determined as appropriate for settings with children who have diverse language backgrounds and (2) a survey of teachers regarding the instructional practices they use with children who are ELLs. The author reviews the procedures underlying the selection of classroom observation measures, the development of the instructional practices questionnaire, and the sampling procedures used for each type of data collection. They discuss the results from data collection using the classroom observation measures (Chapters II through IV) and instructional practices questionnaires (Chapter V) and they examine the relationships among these measures and summarize across them. (Contains 171 tables, 13 figures and 27 footnotes.)

The purpose of this study was to examine the alignment of the easyCBM[R] mathematics benchmark and progress monitoring measures to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics "Curriculum Focal Points" (NCTM, 2006). Based on Webb's alignment model (1997, 2002), we collected expert judgments on individual math items across a sampling of forms for grades K, 1, and 3-8. We found generally strong alignment across grade levels, focal points, and test forms between the easyCBM[R] mathematics items and the content standards. Example of Rater Materials is appended. (Contains 83 tables.)

In February 2007, First 5 LA contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractors, Juarez and Associates, American Institutes for Research (AIR), and Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center, to conduct the First 5 LA/LAUP Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study (UPCOS). The authors conducted the study in two phases. The spring 2007 pilot phase (Phase 1) examined the feasibility, reliability, and validity of selected child development measures in the large, culturally and linguistically diverse population of children served by LAUP programs. In early spring 2007, the authors selected a purposive sample of 418 4-year-olds enrolled in 14 LAUP programs. The children were predominantly Latino (60 percent), and 28 percent spoke primarily Spanish at home. Data collection included direct child assessments and a teacher interview encompassing ratings of children's behavior and development. The second phase of the study (fall 2007 and spring 2008) addressed the quality and overall implementation of LAUP programs, children's growth from fall to spring, and the relationships between family characteristics and children's development over time. After describing the characteristics of the representative sample of children and families, the authors report their findings related to the three broad questions this study addresses, which are described in more detail in Chapter II: (1) What is the overall level and range of quality in the implementation of LAUP/PoP center-based programs?; (2) How do children enrolled in LAUP/PoP center-based programs develop from fall to spring?; and (3) How are characteristics of children and families related to school readiness outcomes? In Chapter II, the authors describe the study methods used, including how they sampled programs and families; what child, parent, teacher, and classroom measures they used; what data collection procedures they followed; and what research questions the study was designed to address. In Chapter III, they present the results, beginning with descriptive data on programs, teachers, and classrooms, followed by descriptions of children and families. They then report what they learned about parents' involvement and satisfaction with the program. They conclude the results chapter with findings about the relationships between child and family characteristics and the children's school readiness outcomes. Chapter IV summarizes the findings and presents their assessment of their implications for programs and recommendations for future study. In the appendices, they provide details on the measures used, the routing procedure used for determining the language of assessment, what they learned about a new experimental observational measure of teacher-child interactions, and their report on the PoP programs. Appended are: (1) Measures Used in Phase 2 of the Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study; (2) Procedures for Routing Children into the Most Appropriate Language for Assessment; (3) Tables of Results Presented in Chapter III; (4) Descriptive Results from the Pilot Study of the Language Interaction Snapshot (LISn); (5) Descriptive Information on LAUP Programs Participating in the Power of Preschool Demonstration Program; and (6) Development of a Respect for Differences Scale. Individual appendices contain references. Individual chapters contain footnotes. (Contains 98 tables, 24 figures and 4 boxes.) [For executive summary, "The Children of LAUP: Executive Summary of the First 5 LA Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study," see ED533142.]

Achieving the Dream colleges engage in a process of institutional improvement to increase student success. A central component of this process is engaging internal and external stakeholders to help develop and implement interventions or changes in programs and services that improve student success. To determine whether these interventions do indeed improve student outcomes, and what changes and refinements should be made to produce further improvements, colleges need to evaluate their interventions. Achieving the Dream institutions are expected to develop plans for evaluating student success interventions before they begin their implementation. These plans should specify the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data that will form the basis of the evaluation. The plans should also indicate how the results of the evaluation will be used to improve the effectiveness of the interventions. Having the capacity to effectively evaluate student success interventions is necessary for meeting the expectations of funders, accreditation agencies, students, policy makers, and the public. It is essential for continuously improving the impact of programs and services on student learning and success. This guide is designed to help colleges plan and conduct effective evaluations of their student success interventions. A list of resources is included. (Contains 6 figures.)

In this technical report, data are presented on the predictive and concurrent relation between various student demographic variables (gender, race/ethnicity, special education status, Title 1 status, English language learning status, and economic disadvantage) and three reading easyCBMs (passage reading fluency, vocabulary, and multiple-choice comprehension) with a criterion measure of the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS). The findings are replicated for two school districts and across three time periods. Consistently, a significant amount of the variance for the criterion measure is explained by the combination of variables, particularly from the three reading measures.

In this technical report, we describe the development and piloting of a series of mathematics progress monitoring measures intended for use with students in grade 1. These measures, available as part of easyCBM [TM], an online progress monitoring assessment system, were developed in 2008 and administered to approximately 2800 students from schools across the United States in March through June of 2009 using a common item design to allow all items to be estimated on the same scale within each grade level. We analyzed the results of the piloting using a one parameter logistic (1PL) Rasch analysis. Because the results of these analyses are quite lengthy, we present the results for each grade's analysis in its own technical report, all sharing a common introduction but unique methods, results, and discussion sections. (Contains 5 tables.)

When studying different types of returns to education, educational reforms are commonly used in the economics literature as a source of exogenous variation in education. The Swedish compulsory school reform is one example; the reform extended compulsory education throughout the country, in different municipalities at different points in time. Such variation across cohorts and regions can be used in a differences-in-differences framework, in order to estimate causal effects of education. This paper provides a guide to researchers who consider using the Swedish reform in an empirical analysis: I present a description and background of the reform, provide some baseline results, a reliability analysis of the reform coding, a discussion of whether the reform is a valid instrument, and comment on the interpretation of IV estimates of returns to schooling. The main conclusions are the following: i) a reliability analysis of the reform coding finds a lower bound reliability estimate of 0.66-0.91; ii) the reform indeed raised educational attainment, more so for boys than for girls, and iii) with careful consideration of region-specific trends, the reform can be considered a valid instrument for education. Appended are: (1) Reform coding for register data; and (2) Reliability analysis. (Contains 4 figures, 9 tables and 16 footnotes.) [Part of this research has been financed by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.]

This is a checklist of key items to get right when conducting a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an educational program or practice ("intervention"). It is intended as a practical resource for researchers and sponsors of research, describing items that are often critical to the success of a randomized controlled trial. A significant departure from any one of these items, we believe, may well lead to erroneous conclusions about whether the intervention is effective in the sample and setting where it is tested. This document limits itself to key items, and does not try to address all contingencies that may affect the study's success. This checklist includes the What Works Clearinghouse's criteria for reviewing studies, as well as some additional items. The checklist items that correspond with a What Works Clearinghouse criterion are marked with an endnote that describes the correspondence. This checklist is organized into the following four sections: 1. Key items to get right in planning the study; 2. Key items to get right in the random assignment process; 3. Key items to get right in measuring outcomes for the study sample; and 4. Key items to get right in the analysis of study results. (Contains 12 endnotes.) [This publication was produced by the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, in partnership with the What Works Clearinghouse (a joint venture of the American Institutes for Research and the Campbell Collaboration).]

This report contains the results of a pilot survey of employer satisfaction with Connecticut's public college graduates from the class of 2003 conducted by the Department of Higher Education (DHE) in the spring of 2005. The project was part of a four-state project entitled, "Defining Best Practices for Responsible Accountability Models in Higher Education," funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The study found that a total of 9,260 graduates of the class of 2003 from the University of Connecticut (UConn), Connecticut State University (CSU) and the Community Colleges (CC), collectively known as the constituent units, were employed at 4,330 Connecticut companies. This yielded an overall in-state employment rate of 89 percent. A total of 3,007 of these companies then were surveyed about their satisfaction with basic skills, professional skills, personal attributes and job skills of these graduates. In all, 931 of the survey recipients formally contacted DHE after receiving the survey, for a contact rate of 22.6 percent. Of these, 696 surveys were actually completed for an overall response rate of 17 percent. This is significantly higher than the 12-14 percent range generally expected from general, mass-mailing surveys. Overall satisfaction with public graduates was "very high". On a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 meaning "very satisfied" and 1 meaning "very dissatisfied," Connecticut employers rated overall satisfaction at 3.45, falling between "satisfied" and "very satisfied" (Table 3). The vast majority (79%) of the respondents indicated that the graduates evaluated in the survey had the necessary skills for promotion in the business. Almost 95 percent indicated that they would hire other graduates from that institution. The pilot study has yielded good news for Connecticut public colleges in terms of overall satisfaction and has provided, for the first time, some useful information for improvement, particularly in the skills areas. In particular, "Professional Skills" such as team building needs to be enhanced by our colleges. These skills tend to improve with workforce experience, so increasing work and/or internship opportunities for students through state-level incentives or other means would be an important area to explore further. The study also highlights some of the difficulties in tracking graduates into the workforce and surveying employers on workforce success. However, given the importance of workforce development for Connecticut's economic future, investment in improving tracking systems such as these is critical. (Contains 12 tables, 5 charts and 4 endnotes.)

Since mid-1999, a bold initiative has been underway in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to improve the well-being of the youngest members of the greater Cleveland community. A community-wide initiative targeting children from birth through age five and their families was launched in July 1999, and in the following 5 years demonstrated substantial success in developing a universal and comprehensive approach for supporting families with young children. The Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), renamed Invest in Children in late 2004, provides a powerful case example of how one urban community recognized the needs of its young children and their families and sought to address them in an ongoing, comprehensive, and multifaceted way. The main findings of the report include: (1) A community-wide network of services for young children and their families has been established, and the apparatus of county government has been altered to directly support and coordinate early childhood services; (2) More children under age six in Cuyahoga County are receiving needed services at earlier ages than ever before; (3) Children and their parents are beginning to show benefits from the services provided through the Initiative; (4) Efforts to deepen and extend the services, tailor them to individual needs, and assure continuing quality should continue; and (5) The public and private partners who established this Initiative have maintained their commitment for half a decade and recently recommitted to it, with a new strategic plan that outlines a continued focus on program improvement based on evaluation. The evaluation identified areas of ongoing challenge and recommendations to address these include: (1) Develop supplemental approaches to home-based strategies, involving individualized services tailored to caregiver characteristics, to engage (a) more at-risk families, and (b) family child care providers; (2) Develop a system to identify and intervene with families with a young child who lacks a consistent source of medical care (i.e., a medical home); (3) Promote quality improvement strategies for family child care and home visiting that include attracting qualified and motivated individuals to deliver services; (4) Continue supports and services for children with special needs; (5) Continue efforts to expand newborn home visiting beyond first time and teen parents; and (6) Advocate for high quality preschool programs and universal pre-kindergarten programs. Individual chapters contain appendices, footnotes and references. (Contains 73 tables and 67 figures.) [This paper was submitted by the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences of the Case Western Reserve University with the Chapin Hall Center for Children of the University of Chicago and with consultants from Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For "Cuyahoga County Early Childhood Initiative Evaluation: Phase II Final Report. Executive Summary," see ED533518.]

Authorized by an amendment to the Missouri Constitution in 1972, and established by state statute as part of the Omnibus State Reorganization Act of 1974, the Coordinating Board for Higher Education (CBHE) has the responsibility of identifying the postsecondary educational needs of potential students and the training needs of business and industry and developing a plan that outlines how the state system of postsecondary education can most effectively and efficiently provide a postsecondary education to its citizens so that they can be successful and meet the workforce needs of the state. The CBHE in turn is responsible for coordinating this plan and ensuring its successful implementation throughout the system, which serves nearly 400,000 students through 13 public four-year colleges and universities, 19 public two-year colleges, one public two-year technical college, 25 independent colleges and universities, and 140 proprietary and private career schools. This 2004 annual report is submitted by the Coordinating Board for Higher Education, in conjunction with the Missouri Department of Higher Education, as required by state law (Section 173.040, RSMo), to the Governor of the State of Missouri and members of the General Assembly. Appended are: (1) Section 173.040, RSMo; (2) FY 2005 Coordinated Strategic Plan; (3) Public Two- and Four-Year Institution Enrollment Data; (4) Private Not-for-Profit (Independent) Institution Enrollment Data; (5) Proprietary School Enrollment Data; and (6) Academic Program Actions.

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE), Office for Exceptional Children (OEC) oversees statewide preschool special education programs with school districts, approved providers and parents. Special Education and related services are available for children from the age of three through age 21 who have been identified with a disability. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) provides the legal grounds for children with disabilities to receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). This guide answers the following questions for parents: (1) How will I know if my preschool age child needs special education and related services? (2) How will my child receive special education programs and related services? (3) What programs or services will my child receive? (4) How will my child be transported to and from special education programs and services? (5) How will I know that my child is making progress? (6) How will I be involved as a parent? and (7) Where do I get more information?