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This handbook brings together detailed information about the WWC, its structure, processes, and the standards used to assess research, all in one comprehensive guide.

A User Guide designed to help teachers, supervisors and school leaders get the most out of the WWC.

This report presents findings from "Distance Education at Postsecondary Institutions: 2006–07," a survey that was designed to provide national estimates on distance education at 2-year and 4-year Title IV eligible, degree-granting institutions. Distance education was defined as a formal education process in which the student and instructor are not in the same place. Thus, instruction may be synchronous or asynchronous, and it may involve communication through the use of video, audio, or computer technologies, or by correspondence (which may include both written correspondence and the use of technology such as CD-ROM). The questionnaire instructed institutions to include distance education courses and programs that were formally designated as online, hybrid/blended online, and other distance education courses and programs. Hybrid/blended online courses were defined as a combination of online and in-class instruction with reduced in-class seat time for students.

This Issue Brief provides estimates of the number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States in 2007 and compares these estimates to those from 1999 and 2003. In addition, parents’ reasons for homeschooling their children in 2007 are described and compared to 2003. Estimates of homeschooling in 2007 are based on data from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) of the 2007 National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES).

The Institute of Education Sciences invites qualified small business firms to submit a "Fast-Track" (Phase I & Phase II) proposal for up to $850,000 for the research and development of technological products that lead to improved student learning or improve the efficiency with which schools are operated. The due date and time for the receipt of proposals is 12PM EST on January 22, 2009.

The WWC has released two new quick reviews: one looks at a study of the effects of a program that provides coaches to middle school reading teachers; the other rates a study of the effects of the Language Essentials of Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) professional development curriculum on the reading achievement of second graders.

This Issue Brief uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to examine the scores of public-school language-minority students on a mathematics assessment in 1st grade, as well as the gain in their scores between 1st and 5th grades. Scores are reported by three background characteristics--student's race/ethnicity, poverty status, and mother’s education--that have been found to be related to achievement. The findings indicate that language-minority students (English Proficient students and English Language Learners) scored lower on a 1st-grade mathematics assessment than did students whose primary home language was English. Between 1st and 5th grades, there was no measurable difference in gain scores on the mathematics assessment among the three language groups. However, gain score differences within and between the language groups were found by student background characteristics. For example, Asian language-minority students made greater gains than their Hispanic peers.

This new Beginning Reading report from the WWC looks at "Houghton Mifflin: Invitations to Literacy", an integrated K–8 reading and language arts program that is structured around themes and aims to stimulate, teach, and extend communication and thinking skills.

The WWC's report on "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS)", formerly called the "Auditory Discrimination in Depth [ADD]" program, has been updated to include reviews of 12 studies that have been released since 2005. "LiPS" is a program designed to teach students skills to decode words and to identify individual sounds and blends in words.

This report presents information from the Winter 2007-08 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) web-based data collection. Tabulations represent data requested from all postsecondary institutions participating in Title IV federal student financial aid programs. The tables in this publication include data on the number of staff employed in Title IV postsecondary institutions in fall 2007 by primary function/occupational activity, length of contract/teaching period, employment status, salary class interval, faculty and tenure status, academic rank, race/ethnicity, and gender. Also included are tables on the number of full-time instructional faculty employed in Title IV postsecondary institutions in 2007-08 by length of contract/teaching period, academic rank, gender, and average salaries.

The NAEP 2007 mathematics assessment administered in Puerto Rico to approximately 2,800 fourth- and eighth-grade students from 100 public schools tested students' facility with such topics as measurement, geometry, algebra, and data analysis and probability. The results of this assessment are compared to those for public school students nationally.

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 is the fourth administration of this international comparison since the 1995 initial administration. TIMSS is used to compare over time the mathematics and science knowledge and skills of fourth- and eighth-graders. TIMSS is designed to align broadly with mathematics and science curricula in the participating countries. The results, therefore, suggest the degree to which students have learned mathematics and science concepts and skills likely to have been taught in school. In 2007, there were 58 countries and educational jurisdictions that participated in TIMSS, at the fourth- or eighth-grade level, or both.

The WWC has released two new quick reviews: one looks at a study of the use of everyday language to teach scientific concepts to fifth graders; the other rates a study of "Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools", a summer program that aims to improve the reading skills of disadvantaged elementary and middle school students.

The study examines the extent to which elementary education teacher preparation programs in 36 randomly selected colleges and universities in the six Southeast Region states integrate content related to students with disabilities. Most programs require one disability-focused course, two-thirds incorporate fieldwork related to students with disabilities, and more than half incorporate disability content into their mission statements.

This brief uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to examine (1) the amount of time that students' public school teachers expected them to spend on reading/language arts and mathematics homework in first, third, and fifth grades; and (2) reports from parents of public school children of how often their children did homework at home in the first, third, and fifth grades. Teachers' expectations are reported by the percentage of minority students in the student's school and parents' reports are reported by the child's race/ethnicity. The findings indicate that the amount of reading and mathematics homework that students' teachers expected them to complete on a typical evening generally increased from first grade to fifth grade. In both subjects and in all grades, differences were found by the minority enrollment of the school. Children in schools with higher percentages of minority students had teachers who expected more homework on a typical evening, whereas generally children in lower minority schools had teachers who expected less homework. In addition, in all three grades, larger percentages of Black, Asian, and Hispanic children than White children had parents who reported that their child did homework five or more times a week.

NCEE announces the release of the third commissioned paper in its Technical Methods Report series, designed for use by researchers, methodologists, and evaluation specialists to provide guidance in resolving or advancing challenges to evaluation methods. The paper, The Late Pretest Problem in Randomized Control Trials of Education Interventions, by Peter Schochet, addresses pretest-posttest experimental designs that are often used in randomized control trials (RCTs) in the education field to improve the precision of the estimated treatment effects. For logistic reasons, pretest data are often collected after random assignment, so that including them in the analysis could bias the posttest impact estimates. Thus, the issue of whether to collect and use late pretest data in RCTs involves a variance-bias tradeoff.. This paper addresses this issue both theoretically and empirically for several commonly-used impact estimators using a loss function approach that is grounded in the causal inference literature. The key finding is that for RCTs of interventions that aim to improve student test scores, estimators that include late pretests will typically be preferred to estimators that exclude them or that instead include uncontaminated baseline test score data from other sources. This result holds as long as the growth in test score impacts do not grow very quickly early in the school year.

The 2005 High School Transcript Study User's Guide and Technical Report documents the procedures that were used to collect and summarize data from the 2005 NAEP High School Transcript Study and provides information to secondary users about how to analyze and interpret the data.

See how the WWC rated a study that examined whether students attending a Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) middle school improved students' academic achievement.

The WWC's report on Early Intervention in Reading (EIR) has been updated to include reviews of two studies that have been released since 2005.

This report presents 2006-07 school year information at the national and state level on student enrollment by grade and by race/ethnicity within grade, the numbers of teachers and other education staff, and several student/staff ratios.