Research and Best Practices

The Handbook is designed to guide state, district, and school Title I personnel in providing high-quality, research-based family and community engagement programs and experiences. Thirty-six experts on a range of topics contributed to the Handbook. Each chapter provides grounding in research and practical action principles for the field. A concluding chapter lists specific recommended practices for the state, district, and school. The.....

Resources

Handbook on Family and Community Engagement

The Handbook is designed to guide state, district, and school Title I personnel in providing high-quality, research-based family and community engagement programs and experiences. Thirty-six experts on a range of topics contributed to the Handbook. Each chapter provides grounding in research and practical action principles for the field. A concluding chapter lists specific recommended practices for the state, district, and school. The.....

Improving Adolescent Literacy in Rural Schools: A Schoolwide Approach
This is the second in a series of webinars especially designed to assist rural school staff with implementation of their School Improvement Grants (SIGs). The intended audience for this webinar includes all educators engaged in or interested in improving literacy instruction for adolescents—grades 6–12. The presenters were Dr. Debby Houston Miller and Vicki LaRock from the Center on Instruction's Literacy Team. During this one hour webinar, presenters focused on the following guiding questions: What are the major goals of adolescent.....
Early Warning System Middle Grades Tool
The National High School Center's Early Warning System (EWS) Middle Grades Tool enables schools and districts to identify students who may be at risk for academic failure and to monitor these students’ responses to interventions. The tool relies on student level data available at the school or district including indicators for attendance, course failures, and behavior (if available) to calculate potential risk for eventual dropping out. The intended purpose is to support students with an increased risk of academic failure, in order to get.....
New! ----High School Knowledge Database
The National High School Center has announced a free new online resource located on the website: High School Knowledge Database. The Database houses vetted resources on a variety of high school improvement topics that can be sorted and filtered, and replaces the static Topics Web pages that previously housed these resources. The new Database includes three search options: 1) a Keyword text search; 2) a High School Topic Area(s) search; and 3) an option to Search by the Eight Elements of High School Improvement. This last search allows you to.....
Making it Meaningful: Building a Fair Evaluation System
This document is an examination of the limitations of current teacher evaluation systems, a review of promising research based reform strategies, and some examples from states and school districts that have begun to do this critical and challenging work. Putting in place systems that rely on research and best practices will go a long way toward enhancing student success and closing the achievement gap.
What Makes a High Quality Afterschool Program?
A new policy brief by Denise Huang and Ron Dietel shares findings from nearly 20 years of CRESST research into effective afterschool programs.
Screening for Mathematics Difficulties in K-3 Students - Second Edition
This second edition of Screening for Mathematics Difficulties in K-3 Students which was originally published in 2007 updates the document with new research in the assessment field in developing valid and reliable screening measures for early mathematics difficulties. It focuses on valid and reliable screening measures for students in kindergarten and first grade but also examines data on screening tests for second and third graders, since the goal of screening is to identify students who might struggle to learn mathematics during their initial.....
A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas
This document, based on the research on teaching and learning science, provides the first step towards creating new standards in K-12 science education. It defines the foundational knowledge and skills to be taught in K-12 science and engineering, based on three major dimensions: (1) Scientific and Engineering Practices, (2) Crosscutting Concepts that apply across all fields, and (3) Disciplinary Core Ideas in physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering, technology, and the application of science.
The Handbook on Family and Community Engagement
This Handbook is intended to provide educators, community leaders, and parents with a succinct survey of the best research and practice accumulated over the years. More important, the Handbook gives us a guide—a lean and lucid roadmap with which we can travel to a new plain in our quest for each and every student’s academic, personal, social, and emotional development. The authors wanted to bring together the best minds on the various topics related to family and community engagement and produce a guidebook that is solid in its research.....
The Standards for Mathematical Practice
Drawing from NCTM process standards and the National Research Council’s Adding it Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics, this document from the National Governor's Association serves as a useful supplement to the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. It describes varieties of expertise—“processes and proficiencies”--that mathematics teachers should develop in their students.
The English Language Learner KnowledgeBase
This English Language Learner KnowledgeBase website is an online database of resources supporting education professionals in the administration of programs and instruction for ELLs. Its resources are identified for four categories of users: Program Administrators, Teachers, Parent Advocates, and Educators of Migrant Students. This resource pertains to the following topics: English Language Learning Special Populations Research: Meta-analyses and Summaries Practitioner Guides PD Modules and Training Materials.....
A Practical Guide to Designing Comprehensive Teacher Evaluation Systems
Across the nation, states and districts are in the process of building better teacher evaluation systems that not only identify highly effective teachers but also systematically provide data and feedback that can be used to improve teacher practice . A Practical Guide to Designing Comprehensive Teacher Evaluation Systems is a tool designed to assist states and districts in constructing high-quality teacher evaluation systems in an effort to improve teaching and learning
Key Considerations When Measuring Teacher Effectiveness: A Framework for Validating Teachers’ Professional Practices
The report describes three levels of data collection to measure teacher effectiveness both with and without standardized test scores.
Building Teacher Evaluation Systems: Learning From Leading Efforts
This report from the Aspen Institute is part of three reports recently released by the Institute to provide policymakers and education leaders with information on how teacher evaluation and performance management systems work and to use the resulting evaluation results with other information, practices and policy levers to improve teaching and learning. This report is a synthesis of Aspen Institute’s profiles of the teacher evaluation and performance management system efforts conducted by the District of Columbia Public Schools (Teaching and.....
Find What Works

Looking for a better way to find curricula, products, and practices that meet your school or district's needs? Check out the new and improved What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) search feature, Find What Works. This powerful tool makes it easy to find out what rigorous research says about the effectiveness of more than 100 widely used education interventions. You can search for interventions by grade level, subject, delivery method, and other.....

The Complex Ecology of Response to Intervention
This document contains papers presented by the National Center on Response to Intervention at a structured poster session, “The Complex Ecology of Response to Intervention,” at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2010 Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. The topics covered include 1. information on the overall RTI framework, 2. screening and progress monitoring within RTI, 3. delivery of instructional interventions within a RTI system, 4. SLD identification and RTI, 5. implementation of RTI across states, and 6. RTI as.....
Updated Progress Monitoring Tools Chart (National Center on RTI)
The National Center on Response to Intervention announces the updated release of the Progress Monitoring Tools Chart! This chart represents the results of the third annual review of progress monitoring tools by the Center’s Technical Review Committee (TRC). The chart provides ratings on the technical adequacy of progress monitoring tools used within an RTI context. The tools were rated against standards of general outcome measures, or mastery measures. Additional information on how to implement the tools can be found on the chart as well......
New Updates to the National High School Center's Early Warning System (EWS) Tool v2.0 and Technical Manual
The National High School Center recently released an updated version of the tool and technical manual to better support users as they strive to identify and address issues that lead to students dropping out of school. The updated tool includes a new Export Data feature, and the updated Technical Manual includes several additional instructions, hints, and cautions to help you use the tool. More details on the new tool and Technical Manual are below, along with instructions on how you can easlily transfer your existing data into the new tool......