Quality improvement in early care and education often relies on annual classroom observations. This study examined biweekly ratings of classroom quality by teachers’ coaches over six months and found that quality varied over time. The findings suggest that the timing and number of quality ratings should inform program improvement decisions.

Disruptive behaviors in school can hinder students’ learning and long-term success. This study evaluated a “multi-tiered systems of support for behavior” program, which reinforces good behavior and provides supplemental support to students in need. Overall student outcomes did not improve but students who struggled the most saw some short-term benefits.

An accompanying brief describes how three school systems are moving toward whole-system approaches focused on healing, prevention, and cultivating psychologically safe and supportive environments. This companion brief provides advice from leaders in two of those systems for others who may want to a develop a system-wide vision for such practices.

This study investigates whether naturally occurring lotteries, which approximate random assignment, can be used to evaluate the long-term effects of instructional alignment—standards, curricula, and assessments that build on one another from pre-K to elementary school—on children in Boston Public Schools. It concludes that they can.

Children who received two years of early math enrichment in New York City had improved math test scores in third grade. The size of the effect is equivalent to closing about 40 percent of the achievement gap between children from families with low incomes and their peers from families with higher incomes.