Search

In this brief, the authors examine changes in enrollments at the Los Angeles Community College District between fall 2017 and summer 2023 to document the extent of pandemic-era enrollment declines overall and across student populations.

To make up for pandemic-related learning losses, many U.S. public school districts have increased enrollment in their summer school programs. We assess summer school as a strategy for COVID-19 learning recovery by tracking the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022 across eight districts serving 400,000 students. Based on students' spring to fall progress, we find a positive impact for summer school on math test achievement (0.03 standard deviation, SD), but not on reading tests. These effects are predominantly driven by students in upper elementary grades. To put the results into perspective, if we assume that these districts have losses similar to those present at the end of the 2022-23 school year (i.e., approximately -0.2 SD), we estimate summer programming closed approximately 2% to 3% of the districts' total learning losses in math, but none in reading.

School district central offices make consequential decisions about teaching and learning every day that impact the educational opportunities and outcomes for millions of students in our nation's public schools. Given the consequential nature of these decisions, it is important that district leaders use the highest quality research, alongside other forms of information, to support their decision- making about instruction. But there is considerable variability in what and how district leaders use research. This raises the question: What conditions enable school district leaders to use research, alongside other forms of information, in their decision-making? In this report, we focus on organizational routines, which are a central medium through which instructional decisions are made in school districts. Routines may matter for research use because they bring particular people together at particular moments in the decision-making process, shaping what and how decisions are made, and likely the role of research therein. However, organizational routines have received little attention in existing scholarship on research use. We employed a comparative case study approach of four large districts. These districts vary in two dimensions - the extent to which they drew on external sources of research, and the presence of organizational routines - that prior theory suggested mattered for research use. Data collection involved interviews of district leaders on their decision-making in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) at the elementary level. For this report, we focused on 140 interviews with district leaders that related to district organizational routines around ELA professional development. In all four districts, district leaders accomplished the complex work of instructional decision-making around ELA professional development by using multiple, interrelated, routines that both divided up decision-making into different tasks and also connected decision-making between individual routines. Districts divided-up the disparate work of decision-making into three different types of routines: design, deployment, and diagnosis. All four districts drew on common sources for information, including data, research, individuals, and organizations. But, each district had distinct portraits of information use in their decision-making. They varied in the number of distinct information sources (range), the relative distribution of information types (balance), and the degree to which a fewer or larger number of district leaders invoked research and other forms of information (spread).

This study describes the activities and influence of three different types of research practice partnerships (RPPs) that shared a common focus on improving mathematics teaching and learning. The three types of RPPs were a networked improvement community (NIC), a design research partnership (DRP), and a research alliance (RA). These types differ in the kinds of roles researchers and practitioners typically play, as well as in their approaches to research. As such, a descriptive study has the potential to improve understanding of the relationship between the design of an RPP and its influence on the partner district policies and practices. Data collection for this study sought to elicit information about each partnership's goals, activities, and influence on district policies and practices. It focused on the work of each RPP between 2016 and 2018. The research questions were: (1) How did the RPPs differ with respect to their organization and major activities?; (2) What kinds of research products did the RPPs produce?; (3) What influence did the RPPs have on partner districts' decisions regarding policies, programs, and practices?; and (4) What influence did the RPPs have on sharing research-based ideas with their district-leader partners? In answering each of the questions related to products and influences, the authors consider how the organization of each RPP helps to account for variations observed across partnerships, as well as how local conditions that may be unique to a particular RPP might matter. For district leaders seeking to partner, answers to these questions can inform their thinking about who would make a good partner and how to organize the joint work, depending on the needs of that district. Similarly, they can also inform future research to test strategies for improving the effectiveness of partnerships.

Grounding research-practice partnerships in educators' expertise can offer us insight into innovative approaches that schools are using to foster student SEL. Our efforts in facilitating the Boston Charter Research Collaborative (BCRC) educator convenings align with the Aspen SEAD recommendations for forging strong, mutually-beneficial partnerships, and yield important insights about novel approaches, resources, and uses of data related to students' social-emotional development. In our latest working paper from the Boston Charter Research Collaborative, we share lessons learned and recommendations for putting educators at the forefront of research-practice partnerships. We also share strategies and resources in use by BCRC educators from Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, Match Charter Public School, KIPP Massachusetts, and Boston Collegiate Charter School.

This paper, authored in collaboration with researchers from Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviews findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) at a partner school, focused on understanding the effects of a direct-to-student intervention on students' mindfulness development. In the RCT (publication in press), middle school students were randomly selected to participate either in the mindfulness intervention or a coding training. About half of the students also took part in brain imaging before and after the intervention. We found that students who participated in the mindfulness program reported less perceived stress and demonstrated improvements in sustained attention. Brain imaging of participants also revealed less reactivity in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with emotion and stress. These findings suggest the potential value of mindfulness interventions for helping students manage stress and improve their attention, two skills related to self-regulation. The paper describes the study in greater detail and provides additional information about the role of mindfulness in education. We also include recommendations and resources for educators seeking to integrate mindfulness practices into the classroom.

This report presents results from the second phase of a descriptive study of the Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Education Research program. This two-year grant program, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education, supports exploratory research within a partnership context. In each funded partnership, researchers collaborate with practitioners from state or local education agencies on a research project that investigates a problem of practice and identifies strategies to address the key issues. The first three cohorts of researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPPs), funded in 2013-2015, using a mixed-methods, cross-case design. A summary of Phase I findings can be found in NCRPP Technical Report No. 2, A Descriptive Study of the IES Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships Program. For Phase II, two survey instruments, one for researchers and one for practitioners were developed. The surveys included five previously-tested scales of items from NCRPP's national survey of educational leaders' research use as well as new items related to partnership goals, prior relationships, and future work together. New items were tested and revised through a cognitive piloting process. An interview protocol for each group was also developed, pilot-tested, and implemented, as well as a systematic document review of grant applications. This report describes the instrument development process, sampling strategy, and key constructs. The report then offers analysis for questions asked about perceived benefits of partnerships, and questions asked regarding partnership contexts. Findings of this study can hopefully inform the IES RPP program, but also contribute to knowledge on the processes, successes, and challenges of RPPs in education. [For "A Descriptive Study of the IES Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Education Research Program: Interim Report. Technical Report No. 2", see ED599955.]

There is growing interest in research-practice partnerships (RPPs)--collaborations between researchers and practitioners formed to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving educational outcomes. Advocates argue that such partnerships enable greater research use in decision making and address persistent issues in education. Funders including the Institute for Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation, share enthusiasm for the approach and are investing considerable resources to develop new RPPs. Despite large investments from funders to develop and support RPPs in education, there has been little systematic research on them creating a need for comparative studies of RPPs. In 2013, IES launched the Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Education Research program, which is referred to in this report as the RPP program. This program was part of a focus on partnerships as a strategy to support rigorous, relevant research that meets the needs of local communities and builds local capacity. The two year grant program supports exploratory research within a partnership context. Researchers and practitioners collaborate on a research project to explore a problem of practice, identify strategies to address the key issues, and engage in preliminary design work related to the problem of practice. This interim report presents the results of the first phase of the study regarding questions that are detailed in the following areas: (1) Goals of the Partnerships; (2) Conducting and Using Research Partnerships; (3) Activities of the Partnerships; (4) Communication within Partnerships; (5) Challenges to Working in Partnerships; (6) Perceptions of the Partnerships; (7) Planned Future Activities of Partnerships; and (8) Guidance for IES. The instrument development process, sampling strategy and key constructs are described. Preliminary analysis related the the questions detailed in the report are then offered. The findings of this study can inform the IES RPP program and also contribute to knowledge about the processes, successes, and challenges of RPPs in education. This work also provides information about the reported value of these collaborative efforts for researchers and practitioners interested in developing partnerships. Key conclusions, open questions, and next steps are also are discussed. [For "Descriptive Study of the IES Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Education Research Program: Final Report. Technical Report No. 3," see ED599980.]

Since its establishment in 2002, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education has funded dozens of field-initiated efficacy and scale-up studies of interventions, released multiple evaluation studies of major policy initiatives, supported rigorous studies of programs through the Regional Educational Laboratories, and funded training grants to prepare new scholars to conduct high quality research in education. Still there is limited understanding of how educational leaders access and use research. Developing knowledge about when leaders seek out research, where leaders find it, and the purposes for which they use it is critical if education research is to inform policy and practice. To date, a key obstacle to studying research use at scale has been the absence of valid survey measures. Though a number of studies have examined uses of research through interview, observation, and case study methods, survey measures adequate for drawing inferences about how leaders use research have not been developed. This report presents results of the efforts of the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) to address this need. The NCRPP is an IES-funded center focused on the study of knowledge utilization among school and district leaders in the United States. To develop an understanding of how school and district leaders use research, a survey of research use was developed and administered to a nationally representative sample of school and district leaders. The following questions were asked: (1) How frequently do school and district leaders use research and for what purposes; (2) What research do school and district leaders find useful; (3) What are leaders' attitudes toward research; and (4) Where do leaders access research? This report describes the instrument development process, the generation of the sample, the reliability of survey scales used and the ability of scales to discriminate among respondents with different types of attitudes, and the frequency distributions for responses to most items. Key conclusions and next steps are discussed.

Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states (plus D.C.), we investigate the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty. We find that remote instruction was a primary driver of widening achievement gaps. Math gaps did not widen in areas that remained in-person (although there was some widening in reading gaps in those areas). We estimate that high-poverty districts that went remote in 2020-21 will need to spend nearly all of their federal aid on academic recovery to help students recover from pandemic-related achievement losses.