In an era of increasingly rigorous state standards, teachers at all grade levels face heightened expectations to deepen their students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. This report examines the impact of content-intensive professional development on teachers’ math content knowledge, their instructional practice, and their students’ achievement. ...
AIR, along with several partners, recently completed a large-scale evaluation of statewide professional development academies in Texas. The study provided the Texas Education Agency with critical information about the implementation of the professional development academies provided to teachers through the regional education service centers. ...
The Plan, Do, Study, Act Process is central to the improvement of instructional routines. Watch one of the Better Math Teaching Network members in real time and in a real classroom setting introduce the Plan, Do, Study, Act, or PDSA, process.
This CALDER Center paper examines the value of strategically assigning disproportionately larger classes to the strongest teachers in order to optimize student learning in the face of differential teacher effectiveness. The rationale is straightforward: Larger classes for the best teachers benefit the pupils who are reassigned to them; they also ...
This report is intended to serve as a consumer guide that helps decision makers sort through claims about which approaches could truly meet the needs of students. It is the most extensive and comprehensive review of elementary school CSR models ever issued.
With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program underwent three major shifts; by increasing the level of funding, better targeting these funds to the persistently lowest-achieving schools, and requiring that schools adopt specific intervention models, the revamped SIG program ...
As a part of the Striving Readers program supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Milwaukee Public Schools implemented the Read 180 program in five schools in an effort to provide targeted literacy supports to struggling students. AIR's evaluation found that the program had a significant impact on students’ academic ...
Examining whether students in schools receiving School Redesign Grants (SRG) experienced better academic outcomes and attendance than non-SRG students, this evaluation done for the Massachusetts Office of District and School Turnaround Assistance found consistently positive and generally robust effects on student academic achievement, particularly on standardized state assessments. Results also ...
The Network to Transform Teaching (NT3) initiative is designed to (1) increase the number of candidates submitting their first certification component and (2) increase the percentage of National Board Certified Teachers in instructional leadership roles. The initiative aims to establish collaborative processes for continuous improvement in the partner sites that ...
In response to the Great Recession, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed into law, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Education received a total of $100 billion, including $7 billion for two of the Obama administration’s signature grant programs: Race to the Top (RTT) and ...