Academic language skills are critical for reading and understanding content for all students, and particularly for English learners and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This study investigated WordGen Elementary, a program designed to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students’ ability to understand and communicate academic language and their general reading skill.
Impacts on Elementary School Students’ Outcomes
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.
This is the fifth in a series of briefs highlighting strategies to increase educational equity by addressing students’ social and emotional needs. It describes strategies that school systems are using to increase students’ sense of school belonging and connectedness.
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 is the fourth in a series of briefs highlighting strategies to increase educational equity by addressing students’ social and emotional needs. It describes how three school systems are moving toward whole-system approaches focused on healing, prevention, and cultivating psychologically safe and supportive environments for all.
Leveraging Naturally Occurring Lotteries to Examine a District-Wide Rollout of Instructional Alignment Across Pre-K and Kindergarten
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.
School-community partnerships are one strategy leaders can use to increase equity in education by building supportive environments that meet students’ social and emotional needs. A recent brief on school-community partnerships included some advice from three leaders of successful district-level partnership programs. This companion brief focuses specifically on these leaders’ suggestions.
The Impacts of Making Pre-K Count and High 5s on Third-Grade Outcomes
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.
Solutions for Educational Equity Through Social and Emotional Well-Being
Schools and school districts are being asked to provide more and more services to students while being given few additional resources. This brief discusses how school districts can use partnerships with outside organizations and agencies to help provide those additional services.
Reflections from Leaders at District of Columbia Public Schools
A previous brief from this series summarized the experiences and recommendations of leaders who are working to reexamine their districts’ systems, structures, and policies to ensure they support the well-being and learning of all students. This accompanying brief provides those leaders’ thoughts in their own words.
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