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 Pub Number  Title  Date
REL 2023002 Supporting the California Department of Education in Examining Data to Inform the Setting of Thresholds on the California Alternate English Language Proficiency Assessments for California
Staff from the California Department of Education (CDE) will present findings to the State Board of Education (SBE) from a project CDE conducted with analytic technical assistance from the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West. The SBE meeting will take place on May 18 and 19, 2023 at the California State Board of Education, 1430 N Street, Room 1101, Sacramento, California. This item is currently placed as the third item the SBE will take up, making it likely to be presented around midday on May 18.

At the meeting, CDE plans to present the findings and implications from analyses it conducted of student achievement on the state’s alternate English language proficiency and English language arts assessments. REL West staff will attend the presentation in order to briefly describe REL West’s technical assistance role and support the CDE in addressing any questions posed by Board members about technical aspects of the data analysis that cannot be answered by CDE staff. The technical memo and slide deck will be made available on the REL website soon after the presentation to the Board.
5/18/2023
REL 2023148 Interpreting Findings from an Early Learning Inventory Pilot Study
This project was part of a larger REL Southwest coaching series to support the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) in using an early learning inventory (ELI) to assess children’s knowledge and skills at kindergarten entry and to improve state-funded early learning programs. The goals of the project were to assist OSDE in (1) preparing to implement an ELI pilot study, (2) preparing for sampling and recruitment for the ELI pilot study, (3) developing data collection measures to collect information during the pilot study about how the ELI is implemented and teacher outcomes, and (4) analyzing and interpreting data from the ELI pilot study. The coaching was delivered over the course of five sessions from fall 2020 to fall 2022. OSDE staff were the primary participants.

The final two sessions of this coaching project included a review of the pilot study findings and methodology. This project equipped OSDE staff with information to make evidence-based decisions about the ELI and to conduct a more rigorous future study with the ELI.
1/23/2023
NFES 2021023 School Courses for the Exchange of Data (SCED) Uses and Benefits
The School Courses for the Exchange of Data (SCED) Uses and Benefits publication was developed to provide a brief overview of SCED, highlight the research application and benefits of SCED to users, and illustrate SCED uses with case studies. SCED is a voluntary, common classification system for prior-to-secondary and secondary school courses. It can be used to compare course information, maintain longitudinal data about student coursework, and efficiently exchange coursetaking records. SCED is a free resource intended for federal, state, and local education agencies.
1/28/2021
REL 2017274 The Critical Importance of Costs for Education Decisions
This brief provides guidance to decision makers in schools, districts, state education departments, and intermediary organizations about ways that cost analyses can help inform their decisions about program choices, budgets, and strategies. It addresses questions about: (1) why cost information matters in education; (2) what cost metrics are available to inform decision making; (3) how cost analyses can inform decision making; (4) what resources exist to help calculate the costs of education programs; and (5) what types and uses of cost analysis are available for decision making. Finally, the brief discusses the purposes, advantages, disadvantages, and possible applications for four types of cost analyses.
6/20/2017
NCSER 2015002 The Role of Effect Size in Conducting, Interpreting, and Summarizing Single-Case Research
The field of education is increasingly committed to adopting evidence-based practices. Although randomized experimental designs provide strong evidence of the causal effects of interventions, they are not always feasible. For example, depending upon the research question, it may be difficult for researchers to find the number of children necessary for such research designs (e.g., to answer questions about impacts for children with low-incidence disabilities). A type of experimental design that is well suited for such low-incidence populations is the single-case design (SCD). These designs involve observations of a single case (e.g., a child or a classroom) over time in the absence and presence of an experimenter-controlled treatment manipulation to determine whether the outcome is systematically related to the treatment.

Research using SCD is often omitted from reviews of whether evidence-based practices work because there has not been a common metric to gauge effects as there is in group design research. To address this issue, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) commissioned a paper by leading experts in methodology and SCD. Authors William Shadish, Larry Hedges, Robert Horner, and Samuel Odom contend that the best way to ensure that SCD research is accessible and informs policy decisions is to use good standardized effect size measures—indices that put results on a scale with the same meaning across studies—for statistical analyses. Included in this paper are the authors' recommendations for how SCD researchers can calculate and report on standardized between-case effect sizes, the way in these effect sizes can be used for various audiences (including policymakers) to interpret findings, and how they can be used across studies to summarize the evidence base for education practices.
1/7/2016
REL 2014052 Forming a Team to Ensure High-Quality Measurement in Education Studies
This brief provides tips for forming a team of staff and consultants with the needed expertise to make key measurement decisions that will ensure high-quality data for answering the study’s research questions. The brief outlines the main responsibilities of measurement team members. It also describes typical measurement tasks and discusses how the measurement team members can work together to complete the measurement tasks successfully.
9/16/2014
NCER 2013PUBS National Center for Education Research Publication Handbook: Publications from funded education research grants FY 2002 to FY 2013 November
Since its inception in 2002, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has funded over 700 education research grants and over 60 education training grants. The research grants have supported have supported exploratory research to build theory or generate hypotheses on factors that may affect educational outcomes, development and innovation research to create or refine academic interventions, evaluation studies to test the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions, and measurement work to help develop more accurate and valid assessments, and the training grants have helped prepare the next generation of education researchers. NCER‘s education research grantees have focused on the needs of a wide range of students, from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary and adult education, and have tackled a variety of topic areas. The portfolio of research includes cognition, social and behavioral research, math, science, reading, writing, school systems and policies, teacher quality, statistical and research methods, just to name a few.

Each year, our grantees are contributing to the wealth of knowledge across disciplines. What follows is a listing of the publications that these grants have contributed along with a full listing of all the projects funded through NCER's education research grant programs from 2002 to 2013. The publications are presented according to the topic area and arranged by the year that the grant was awarded. Where applicable, we have noted related grant projects and project websites and have provided links to publications that are listed in the IES ERIC database. For grants that do not yet have associated publications in press or published, we include the word Publications as a placeholder to denote where future publications will occur during updates to this document.
12/23/2013
REL 2012023 How California's Local Education Agencies Evaluate Teachers and Principals
This REL West Technical Brief, How California's local education agencies evaluate teachers and principals, summarizes the results of a statewide survey of teacher and principal evaluation practices across school districts and direct-funded charter schools in California. Key findings include:
  • Sixty-one percent of responding local education agencies indicated that their teacher evaluation systems are based on the California Standards for the Teaching Profession.
  • For teacher evaluation, 57 percent of respondents reported using student achievement outcomes or growth data as partial or primary evidence. For principal evaluation, 79 percent reported using these data.
  • Eighty-two percent of responding direct-funded charter schools reported using student achievement or growth data as partial or primary evidence for teacher evaluation, compared with 45 percent of districts. For principal evaluation, the figures were 85 percent of charter schools and 76 percent of districts.
  • More than two-thirds of local education agencies reported having two or three performance rating levels for their teachers (37 percent had two levels, and 35 percent had three) and principals (40 percent had two levels, and 30 percent had three). Local education agencies with two rating levels reported that 98 percent of teachers and 83 percent of principals were rated in the highest category; agencies with three rating levels reported that 91 percent of teachers and 98 percent of principals were rated in the highest category.
4/27/2012
REL 2012021 Prekindergarten Participation Rates in West Virginia
This report compares the shares of preK seats provided by public school systems and collaborative partners—federal or private—and analyzes participation based on socioeconomic and racial/ethnic subgroups and district characteristics. This report updates through 2010/11 a previous report that covered school years 2002/03–2006/07.

The study found that the statewide participation rate in preK more than doubled between 2002/03 and 2010/11, from 26 percent to 63 percent of eligible students.
4/26/2012
REL 2012025 Analyzing Performance by Pennsylvania Grade 8 Hispanic Students on the 2007/08 State Assessment
The report compares performance of grade 8 Hispanic students on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) English language arts and math tests with that of grade 8 White, Black, and other non-Hispanic students during school years 2002/03 to 2008/09. It also examines how grade 8 Hispanic students’ performance varies by key student and school characteristics. The study found that in 2007/08, Hispanic students in Pennsylvania had lower English language arts and math scores than did non-Hispanic students. The differences were statistically significant.
4/25/2012
REL 2012024 English Language Learner Enrollment in Appalachia Region States
This technical brief describes English language learner student enrollment across school districts in the four REL Appalachia Region states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) for 2005/06–2008/09, updating an earlier report covering 1998/99–2004/05. The current brief expands on the earlier report by looking at data by grade span (kindergarten, 1–3, 4–6, 7–8, 9–12) and by geographic locale (city, suburb, town, rural).
3/29/2012
REL 2012020 Updating a Searchable Database of Dropout Prevention Programs and Policies in Nine Low-Income Urban School Districts in the Northeast and Islands Region
This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the Northeast and Islands Region (Myint-U et al. 2009). To update the database, a key informant from each of the nine pilot districts was interviewed on the status and characteristics of the dropout prevention pro-grams and policies in 2010/11. Based on this new information, this brief classifies programs and policies as new, discontinued, or sustained since 2006/07, the years in which programs were included in the database (Myint-U et al. 2009). The term active is used to refer to the combination of new and sustained programs and policies—that is, all programs and policies being implemented in 2010/11.
2/9/2012
REL 2012018 How Prepared are Subgroups of Texas Students for College-Level Reading? Applying a Lexile®-Based Approach
Many students graduate from high school unprepared for the rigorous reading required in entry-level college and career work. This brief builds on a recent report (Wilkins et al. 2010) that used the Lexile measure (a method for measuring the reading difficulty of prose text and the reading capability of individuals) to estimate the proportion of Texas grade 11 public school students in 2009 ready for entry-level college reading in English. The previous study examined the overall grade 11 Texas student population; this brief uses the same methodol-ogy to present similar readiness estimates for student subgroups as defined by 10 character-istics that Texas uses for its state accountability system. An Excel® tool was created to enable school administrators to more easily compare the preparation of grade 11 students to read entry-level English textbooks from University of Texas (UT) system schools with that of stu-dents overall or selected subgroups of students statewide.
1/31/2012
REL 2012019 Comparing Achievement Trends in Reading and Math Across Arizona Public School Student Subgroups
This technical brief examines the 2008/09 reading and math proficiency levels of four categories of Arizona public school students (comprising 11 student subgroups): ethnicity (American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White), English language learner status (English language learner students and non–English language learner students), disability status (students with disabilities and students without disabilities), and economic status (receiving free or reduced-price meals and not receiving free or reduced-price meals). Responding to an Arizona Department of Education request, the brief describes how student subgroup performance differs by school level (elementary, middle, and high) and across three school types: Title I Schools in Improvement (schools serving economically disadvantaged students and participating in the federal school improvement program intended to improve academic performance in schools not meeting adequate yearly progress for at least two consecutive years); Title I Schools Not in Improvement; and non–Title I schools. The same analyses were conducted for charter schools.
10/25/2011
REL 2011017 Achievement Trends of Schools and Students in Arizona’s Title I School Improvement Program
This technical brief responds to an Arizona Department of Education request to study academic performance in schools receiving funding through the federal Title I compensatory education program, the section of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 governing resources for schools and districts serving disadvantaged populations. The brief describes for 2005/06-2008/09 the numbers and distribution of Arizona public schools and students across school levels (elementary, middle, high) for three school types: Title I Schools in Improvement (participating in the school improvement program, a public program to improve the academic performance of students in schools not meeting adequate yearly progress for at least two consecutive years); Title I Schools Not in Improvement; and non-Title I schools. It reports how Schools in Improvement are distributed across school improvement statuses, compares trends in reading and math proficiency for students attending each school type, and examines patterns of movement in and out of school improvement among Title I schools.
7/19/2011
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