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Use of online credit recovery is a growing trend across the country, with the hope that expanding credit recovery options through online courses will help students get back on track toward graduation (e.g., Atkins, Brown, & Hammond, 2007; Gemin, Pape, Vashaw, & Watson, 2015). But expanded use of online credit recovery for high school students has outpaced the research. The authors conducted a multisite study to test a blended-learning model for credit recovery, where the main curriculum is provided through an online program and an in-class teacher provides more individualized instructional support. The authors present findings on the implementation and initial outcomes for two cohorts of students who enrolled in an Algebra 1 or English 9 credit recovery course the summer immediately after their first year of high school. The authors address three main research questions to describe how implementation of the online classes differed from the schools' business-as-usual (BAU) teacher-directed approach to credit recovery, and provide preliminary evidence about the short-term effects of the online approach: (1) How did the "instructional features" of the online classes compare to the BAU classes?; (2) How did "students' experiences" in the online classes compare to the BAU classes?; and (3) How did students' "proximal outcomes" (content knowledge and credit recovery) in the online classes compare to the BAU classes? The findings suggest that implementation of the online classes produced limited instructional contrast with the BAU condition and may have unintentionally altered grading practices. Potentially as a result, fewer students recovered the course credit in the online classes than the control classes. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]

Although much attention in the education research literature has been placed on comparing the effectiveness of charter schools to the effectiveness in traditional public schools, far less work has gone toward developing a better understanding of the differences in spending and resource allocation between the two sectors. This report aims to help address the concern of whether resources available to public charter schools are similar to those available to traditional schools in California. Specifically, the analysis attempts to provide an accurate comparison between traditional and charter school spending in two traditional districts and two charter management organizations (CMOs), as well as answer the following question: "How much would be spent on a charter school if it were treated as a traditional public school?" To facilitate accurate comparisons, the American Institutes for Research collected data from several sources, including data from the Standardized Account Code Structure (SACS) and more granular and comprehensive fiscal data collected directly from two large urban districts and two prominent CMOs in California. The authors conducted interviews with individuals at the district offices and CMOs to better understand the fiscal arrangements between charter schools and their authorizing districts. The focus of this study is on charter schools from two CMOs--Aspire Public Schools and Green Dot Public Schools--operating in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). The authors chose Aspire and Green Dot as the focus of this study because they are highly regarded charter school networks with substantial numbers of schools within the two districts of interest.

This document contains the following nine appendixes of the main report, "What Does It Cost to Educate California's Students? A Professional Judgment Approach. Technical Report. Getting Down to Facts II": (1) Professional Judgement Panel General Instructions; (2) Professional Judgement Panel. Task Instructions; (3) School Resource Profiles; (4) Suggested Reading for Professional Judgement Panelists; (5) Professional Judgement Panelist Information; (6) Program Design Documents; (7) Professional Judgement Panelist Cost Estimates; (8) Descriptive Statistics; and (9) Explanation of Update to Study Findings. [For the main report, see ED594739.]

This report presents the results of a thorough study conducted by American Institutes for Research (AIR) to investigate the cost of providing an "adequate" education to California students attending public elementary, middle, and high schools. The study addresses the following question: "What is the cost of providing all California public school students with access to the California content standards and achieving appropriate levels of proficiency in accordance with standards established by the California Department of Education?" The AIR research team employed a professional judgment approach to costing out an adequate education. This approach leveraged the knowledge and experience of groups of expert educators, known as professional judgment panels (PJPs), to develop school programs that are capable of delivering an adequate education. For the purposes of this study, an adequate education was defined as providing access to instructional programs consistent with the California content standards and providing the opportunity to achieve the proficiency standards established by the California State Board of Education. The PJPs' school program designs needed to deliver adequate education at a minimum cost, and in a variety of contexts with different enrollment sizes and different student needs (i.e., different proportions of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, students classified as English learners [ELs], and students enrolled in special education). Chapters in the report include: (1) Introduction and Overview; (2) Measuring Adequacy Cost Estimates through the Professional Judgment Approach; (3) Translating Resource Specifications into Cost Estimates; (4) "Costing Out" California Adequacy: The Results; (5) Summary and Conclusion. [For the appendices to this report, see ED594741. For a related research summary, see "Working Toward K-12 Funding Adequacy: California's Current Policies and Funding Levels. Research Brief. Getting Down to Facts II" (ED594719).]

California policymakers have established the expectation that all public school students should have access to a broad course of study, in classes where instruction is consistent with the state's content standards. Further, the state holds schools and school districts accountable for their ability to ensure that all students achieve at a specified level of academic proficiency, attend school regularly, and graduate from high school prepared for adult success. This brief puts California's K-12 funding system into context by comparing the state's school finance system to other states, both in terms of funding levels and policy. It also summarizes the results of an adequacy study that takes on the difficult task of estimating how much funding might be enough, using a professional judgment approach to provide some insights into the resources likely needed for adequate schooling. [This brief summarizes three "Getting Down to Facts II" technical reports on funding levels in California: "Adequacy and State Funding Formulas: What Can California Learn From the Research and National Context?" (ED594606), "District Dollars 2: California School District Finances, 2004-05 through 2016-17" (ED594665), and "What Does It Cost to Educate California's Students? A Professional Judgment Approach" (ED594739).]

California's Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2010 established transitional kindergarten (TK), the first year of a two-year kindergarten program for students affected by the change in the birthdate cutoff for entry into kindergarten from December 2 to September 1. This brief, the sixth in a series highlighting findings from the "Study of California's Transitional Kindergarten Program," summarizes what researchers have learned across the study about the impact of TK on students' school readiness skills, whether impacts vary for different student groups, whether those impacts are sustained, and which TK classroom characteristics are most supportive of positive outcomes. [For the full report, see ED609085.]

California's Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2010 established transitional kindergarten (TK), the first year of a two-year kindergarten program for students affected by the change in the birthdate cutoff for entry into kindergarten from December 2 to September 1. This final report from the program's evaluation focuses on results from a five-year study. The study used a rigorous regression discontinuity design to examine whether TK, as a new approach to prekindergarten education for age-eligible students, leads to positive outcomes, for which students, and under what conditions. The findings are based on direct assessments of over 6,000 kindergarteners in California in the fall and spring of the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years, surveys of their teachers, and statewide data on students' English language proficiency. Key findings include: (1) TK gives students an advantage at kindergarten entry on a range of literacy and mathematics skills; (2) TK is effective for all groups of students who participated; (3) TK has no detectable impact on students' executive function or incidence of problem behaviors at kindergarten entry; (4) Impacts of TK are smaller at the end of kindergarten, though TK students continue to have an advantage over non-TK students on letter and word identification skills; and (5) There was little variation in the impact of TK by classroom or instructional characteristics. [For the research brief, see ED609086.]

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is due for reauthorization, and Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Chakkah Fattah have both proposed revisions to the comparability provision of the federal Title I program. Harkin's proposed legislation requires the use of per pupil expenditures, including actual teacher salaries, to demonstrate comparability. This report is the result of a case study in three California districts--Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD), and Twin Rivers Unified School District (TRUSD)--to examine the following research question: "Would our three case study districts be able to use per pupil expenditures to demonstrate comparability?" The case study this report is based on contained three components. First, we conducted a document analysis to understand the approach currently used in each district to demonstrate comparability. We found that all three of the study districts used student-instructional staff ratios and grade span groupings to demonstrate comparability in 2009-10. Second, we conducted analyses of per pupil spending to examine resource equity across schools within each district. We found the following: (1) Title I schools, on average, have higher total per pupil expenditures (which makes sense because Title I and other federal funds are added to their state and local base resources); (2) On average, state and local base expenditures are similar across Title I and non-Title I schools; (3) Although, on average, schools with higher percentages of low-income students have higher levels of per pupil spending out of state and local base revenues, at any given poverty level, there is a wide range of spending across schools; and (4) Many schools fall below the 90 percent lower limit that is currently required for demonstrating comparability using an overall per pupil expenditure metric. This variation persists when we restrict the analysis to focus on instructional per pupil expenditures. Third, we facilitated discussions with key district officials about the per pupil expenditure analysis. They recognized that shifting to per pupil expenditures would be a major change, expressed concerns, and provided suggestions to enable LEAs to ensure resource comparability across Title I and non-Title I schools. Under the new Title I legislation being considered by Congress, the shift from metric flexibility, including student-instructional staff ratios, to the requirement of using per pupil expenditures to demonstrate comparability represents a substantive shift in federal policy. Our research demonstrates that the proposed requirement would help to close some of the major loopholes in the current comparability provision to improve resource equity across schools within districts. However, our study also reveals several challenges for Congress to address as they debate and make legislative changes to the comparability provision in the ESEA reauthorization process. Appended are: (1) Standardized Accounting Code Structure (SACS) Identifiers; (2) Resource Classification according to the Object Code of the SACS; (3) Ordinary Least Square Regression Model; (4) LAUSD Graphs; (5) PUSD Graphs; and (6) TRUSD Graphs. (Contains 3 exhibits, 19 graphs and 17 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) West.]

This document provides the final two appendixes for "Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Implementation. The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching through 2013-2014" (ED580306). Appendix D provides detailed discussions of lever implementation for each site along with the detailed coded lever tables. Appendix E summarizes the responses of teachers and school leaders to survey questions about the allocation of their work time.

To improve the U.S. education system through more-effective classroom teaching, in school year 2009-2010, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced four Intensive Partnership for Effective Teaching sites. The Intensive Partnerships Initiative is based on the premise that efforts to improve instruction can benefit from high-quality measures of teaching effectiveness. The initiative seeks to determine whether a school can implement a high-quality measure of teaching effectiveness and use it to support and manage teachers in ways that improve student outcomes. This approach is consistent with broader national trends in which performance-based teacher evaluation is increasingly being mandated at state and local levels. To test the theory in practice, the foundation sought partnership sites. It selected three school districts--Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida, Shelby County Schools in Tennessee, and Pittsburgh Public Schools in Pennsylvania. The foundation also selected four charter management organizations--Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and the Partnerships to Uplift Communities, all in California. To evaluate Intensive Partnership implementation, researchers from the RAND Corporation and the American Institutes for Research interviewed annually central office staff at each site and teachers and other staff in a sample of schools for each site. They also used data from annual teacher and school-leader surveys and documents that the sites and the foundation provided. This report summarizes the implementation status of key reform elements at each site when the Intensive Partnerships initiative launched and five years later in the spring of 2014. [For the executive summary, see ED580307. For Appendixes D and E, see ED580322.]

The goal of the Intensive Partnership (IP) initiative is to improve student success by transforming how teachers are recruited, developed, assigned, rewarded, and retained. RAND and American Institutes for Research (AIR) have been studying the seven IP sites (including three districts and four charter management organizations--CMOs) since the 2010-11 school year to understand which strategies for improving the teaching workforce are successful. This report summarizes key findings about how school leaders and teachers have changed the way they allocate their time among various activities across the three years since implementation began (2010-11 through 2012-13). The report contains a preface, acknowledgements, and an executive summary and then presents the findings in five parts. They are: Part I: Introduction; Part II: Methodology; Part III: School Leader Time Allocation Findings; Part IV: Teacher Time Allocation Findings; and Part V: Summary and Concluding Thoughts. The report also includes the appendices: (1) Detailed Discussion of Methodology; (2) School Leader and Teacher Survey Response Rates; (3) Descriptive Statistics of Individual and School Characteristic Categories by Site and Year; (4) School Leader Time Allocation by Site; (5) Teacher Time Allocation by Site; (6) Survey Questions and Categories; (7) Analysis of Individual Questions for Selected Categories for School Leaders; and (8) Analysis of Individual Questions for Selected Categories for Teachers.