The shared book reading intervention

We designed a four-month intervention that integrated a school-based book loan along with information on the benefits of shared book reading (SBR) for children and provided tips for effective reading practices. We did this using weekly flyers, a short phone call and six text messages sent to the parents. This intervention was aimed at fostering children’s language skills by enhancing the frequency and the quality of parent-child interactions around books. To assess the impact of this intervention, we used a randomized experiment, which involved a large, random sample of 4-year olds (N=1880) who attended 47 pre-primary schools located in the city of Paris. This evaluation design marks a significant improvement over previous studies in that the results are applicable to a much larger population. Our large sample size, sampling design and high participation rates of schools and families helped us achieve this outcome.

Important features of the SBR

Three features of this intervention are especially important. First, it was focused on accessibility of information messages for families with low education and an immigrant background. Second, the intervention has an intensive and continued format, aimed at fostering a persistent change in parenting routines. Third, its focus on parent-child interactions around books and the enjoyment of this activity for both parents and kids.  

What is Standards-based Grading?

Typically, U.S. classroom teachers use some tests and assignments purely for summative purposes, recording scores indelibly to be used in a weighted average that determines final grades. In contrast, under a standards-based grading system the teacher uses such assessment evidence both to evaluate the extent to which a student is proficient in each of the course’s learning outcomes at that particular moment in time (summative assessment), and then to provide students with personalized feedback designed to guide further learning (formative assessment). A key feature of standards-based grading is that students are then given opportunities to do further work, at home or in school, and to be reassessed for full credit. In other words, summative assessments become formative tools designed to promote further learning, not just markers of how much students have learned already.

How did we conduct this study?

We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial, recruiting 29 schools and randomly assigning half (14 schools) to a Treatment condition, and half (15 schools) to a Control condition.  Treatment schools implemented the standards-based grading program, called PARLO, in their ninth-grade algebra and geometry classrooms, and Control schools proceeded with business-as-usual. In our participating districts, instruction to learning standards and implementation of formative assessment were already commonly in use. Consequently, the PARLO program focused on implementing two necessary components of standards-based grading. The first was Mastery: students were rated as not-yet-proficient, proficient, or high-performance on each learning outcome, and final grades were computed using a formula based on the number of proficient and the number of high-performance learning outcomes. The second was Reassessment: after providing evidence that they had done further studying, any student could be reassessed for full credit on any learning outcome.

Does reminding mentors to reach out support virtual communication?

Not necessarily. This study tested the effect of a low-cost, light-touch intervention—mentor reminders—designed to bolster virtual outreach. The study examined impacts on the frequency of student-mentor communication and subsequent impacts on mentoring relationship quality. Unexpectedly, although students did not report receiving more (or less) outreach from mentors who received reminders, compared to mentors that did not receive reminders, treated mentors reported that their students initiated less outreach. In addition, students of treated mentors reported that they were less likely to respond to messages their received from their mentors. 

This large-scale randomized experiment found that the National Writing Project’s (NWP’s) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) improved secondary students’ ability to write arguments drawing from nonfiction texts.

What impacts did C3WP have on student achievement?

The study team collected and scored student writing from an on-demand argument writing task similar to those in some state assessments. At the end of the year, students in C3WP districts outscored students in comparison districts by about 0.24 on a 1- to 6-point scale on each of the four measured attributes (see graph). On average, these effects are equivalent to moving a student from the 50th percentile of achievement to the 58th percentile of achievement.

Does computer-based individualized instruction boost math learning?

 Yes. In public schools in Rajasthan, India, students who scored in the bottom 25% of their class improved by 22% of a standard deviation in math test scores (top chart). However, the average student in grades 6-8 who had access to individualized instruction did not outperform those who did not over nine months. Our results suggest that computer-based individualized instruction is most beneficial for low performers.

What is computer-based individualized instruction?

 We provided all students with a computer-adaptive math learning software called “Mindspark.” When students first log in, they take a diagnostic test, which identifies what they know and can do, and the areas in which they can improve. Then, the software presents them with exercises appropriate for their preparation level based on the diagnostic test. The difficulty and topic covered by subsequent exercises dynamically adjust to each student’s progress.

What is the virtual coaching program tested in this study?

Feedback on Alignment and Support for Teachers (FAST) is a virtual coaching program designed to help teachers better align their instruction to state standards and foster student learning. Key components of this 2-year program include collaborative meetings with grade-level teams, individual coaching sessions, instructional logs and video recordings of teachers’ own instruction, and models of aligned instruction provided by an online library of instructional resources. During the collaborative meetings and coaching sessions, teachers and coaches use the logs, video recordings, and models of aligned instruction to discuss ways of improving alignment of their instruction to state standards. Teachers were expected to complete 5 collaborative meetings, 5 individual coaching sessions, 5 video recordings of their instruction, and 5 instructional logs per year.

 How did we assess the impact of the virtual coaching program?

 We assessed the impact of the FAST program on teachers’ instructional alignment and students’ achievement through a multisite school-level randomized controlled trial, which took place in 56 elementary schools spanning five districts and three states. We randomly assigned 29 of the 56 schools to the treatment group and 27 to the control group. The study focused on Grade 4 math and Grade 5 English language arts (ELA) and used the respective state test scores as student achievement outcomes. We used an instructional survey to measure teachers’ instructional alignment. Teacher attendance, FAST coaching logs, teachers’ instructional logs, and video recordings of teachers’ instruction were collected to describe the implementation of the FAST program.

 What did we find?

Timothy Lycurgus, Ben B. Hansen, and Mark White

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Many efficacy trials are conducted only after careful vetting in national funding competitions. As part of these competitions, applications must justify the intervention’s theory of change: how and why do the desired improvements in outcomes occur? In scenarios with repeated measurements on participants, some of the measurements may be more likely to manifest a treatment effect than others; the theory of change may provide guidance as to which of those observations are most likely to be affected by the treatment.

Figure 1: Power for the various methods across increasing effect sizes when the theory of change is correct.  

Jodi L. Davenport, Yvonne Kao, Kristen Johannes, Caroline Byrd Hornburg, and Nicole M. McNeil

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Does the ICUE intervention improve math learning?

Yes, second grade students in classrooms using the Improving Children’s Understanding of Equivalence (ICUE) materials and lessons scored higher on measures related to mathematical equivalence, including equation solving and conceptual problem solving. These higher scores came with no observable trade-offs in computational fluency.

Beth Schueler, Daniel Rodriguez-Segura

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What was this study about?

Covid-19 school closures have generated significant interest in tutoring to make up for lost learning time. Tutoring is backed by rigorous research, but it is unclear whether it can be delivered effectively remotely. We study the effect of teacher-student phone calls in Kenya when schools were closed. Schools (j=105) were randomly assigned for 3^rd, 5^th and 6^th graders (n=8,319) to receive one of two versions of a 7-week weekly math intervention—5-minute accountability checks or 15-minute mini-tutoring sessions—or to the control group.

Daniel Litwok, Laura R. Peck, and Douglas Walton

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How do the earnings impacts of healthcare training vary?

This article explores how earnings impacts vary in an experimental evaluation of a sectoral job training program. We find that over the first two years in the study, those who completed long-term credentials (defined as college degrees or certificates that require a year or more of classes to earn) had program impacts that were about $2,000 larger per year than those who did not complete long-term credentials (whether they completed a short-term credential or no credential at all). A possible explanation for this finding is that those who earned a long-term credential had different experiences in the program, including more engagement with support services, and different post-program outcomes, such as greater employment in high-wage healthcare occupations like registered nurse.

Eric Jenner, Katherine Lass, Sarah Walsh, Hilary Demby, Rebekah Leger, and Gretchen Falk

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How does a cross-age peer mentoring program affect ninth-grade outcomes?

Ninth-grade students who were offered Peer Group Connection High School (PGC-HS) were less likely to receive a suspension or disciplinary referral and self-reported higher levels of school engagement and postsecondary expectations. However, offering the program had no effect on academics (credit attainment, attendance at school, GPA) and other non-cognitive skills (e.g., decision-making skills).

Ben Clarke, Christian Doabler, Marah Sutherland, Derek Kosty, Jessica Turtura, and Keith Smolkowski

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The importance of early mathematics

The importance of a successful start to learning mathematics has been a national priority for several decades. Mounting evidence indicates that trajectories of mathematics performance are established early and remain relatively stable across time. This may in part be due to substantial disparities in young students’ access to early mathematics experiences and instruction with preschool-aged students from upper- and middle-class backgrounds already outperforming their economically disadvantaged peers.

Davide Azzolini, Sonia Marzadro, Enrico Rettore, Katja Engelhardt, Benjamin Hertz, Patricia Wastiau

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Does providing teachers with personalized support help them complete online training courses?

Yes, but not for all and not everywhere. The TeachUP policy experimentation found large effects of personalized support on course completion in nine European Union Member States among professional (i.e., in-service) teachers (+10.6 percentage points), but not among student teachers. Moreover, no effects are found in Turkey. More studies are needed to investigate the contextual and learner characteristics that drive the heterogeneous effects.

Summary by: Wen Wen

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What are “state-” and “trait-” math achievements in early education?

Interventions can boost early math skills, but the role of these early skills on later math achievement is unclear. Consider that students who demonstrate stronger early math skills tend to demonstrate stronger later math achievement, yet some interventions that improve early math skills do not improve later math achievement – that is, the early benefits fade substantially after 2 or 3 years.

Daniela Alvarez-Vargas, Sirui Wan, Lynn S. Fuchs, Alice Klein, & Drew H. Bailey

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Despite policy relevance, long term evaluations of educational interventions are rare relative to the amount of end of treatment evaluations. A common approach to this problem is to use statistical models to forecast the long-term effects of an intervention based on the estimated shorter term effects. Such forecasts typically rely on the correlation between children’s early skills (e.g., preschool numeracy) and medium-term outcomes (e.g., 1^st grade math achievement), calculated from longitudinal data available outside the evaluation. This approach sometimes over- or under-predicts the longer-term effects of early academic interventions, raising concerns about how best to forecast the long-term effects of such interventions. The present paper provides a methodological approach to assessing the types of research design and analysis specifications that may reduce biases in such forecasts.

What did we do?

Sam Sims, Jake Anders, Matthew Inglis, Hugues Lortie-Forgues

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Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have proliferated in education, in part because they provide an unbiased estimator for the causal impact of interventions. Yet RCTs are only unbiased in expectation (on average across many RCTs).

Estimates of the effect size from specific RCTs will in general diverge from the true effect due to chance differences between the treatment and control group. In suitably powered trials, this imbalance tends to be small and statistical inference helps to control erroneous findings.

Catherine Armstrong Asher, Ethan Scherer, James S. Kim

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What features of text messaging campaigns for early elementary families might increase their effectiveness?

Text messaging interventions are an increasingly popular way to support students and their families. We compared how three features of text messages, sent to parents, affect the reading behavior and test scores of their early elementary school children:

Ira Nichols-Barrer, Maria Bartlett, Thomas Coen, & Phil Gleason

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Do KIPP Middle Schools Boost Long Run Student Outcomes?

Yes they do, according to a rigorous national study of 13 KIPP middle schools. Building on prior studies of KIPP that show KIPP middle schools have strong positive effects on students’ middle school achievement, this study found that KIPP middle schools also improve longer-term rates of enrollment in four-year college programs. Winning a lottery-based admissions offer to a KIPP middle school increased a student’s probability of enrolling in college by 7 percentage points, even though a third of these students never enrolled at KIPP. Adjusting for enrollment, attending KIPP increased college enrollment rates by 13 percentage points. This boost is similar in size to nationwide disparities in college enrollment across racial groups—a relevant benchmark since nearly all KIPP students are Black or Latinx. 

Keith Smolkowski, Hill Walker, Brion Marquez, Derek Kosty, Claudia Vincent, Carey Black, Gulcan Cil, & Lisa A. Strycker

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Can Social Skills Instruction be Efficient and Effective?

Yes. A rigorous study shows that the We Have Skills program efficiently and effectively taught the academically related social skills needed for early elementary students to succeed in school. We Have Skills appealed to children, and teachers quickly mastered and readily implemented the program in their classrooms.

Summary by: Hang (Heather) Do

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What was this study about?

Chronic absenteeism (missing more than 10% of school days or more in one year) negatively impacts children’s school achievement and development. Yet, little is known about how absenteeism influences the effectiveness of interventions. In this study, the authors examined whether absenteeism affected the impacts of an intensive two-year professional development (PD) intervention aiming to improve the quality of Chilean public preschool and kindergarten and enhance the language and literacy outcomes of participating children (UBC (Un Buen Comienzo/A Good Start)).