What's The Research On...?

Professional development that addresses school capacity
Student achievement is more likely to improve when professional development addresses not only the learning of individual teachers, but also the school's organizational capacity.

Reclaiming Assessment
Effective assessment practices are more likely to take place in schools with higher achievement. That’s because these contexts offer explicit connections, through assessments, to varied communities of interest: district, school, teachers, students, and families. These connections increase the likelihood that the assessments meet the needs of these audiences and that they prompt some kind of action. These findings result from a recent study conducted in nine Wisconsin elementary schools participating in a class size reduction program called Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE). SAGE is a state-supported class size reduction (CSR) program that provides funding to districts to limit class sizes to 15 students and 1 teacher in grades K-3. Almost 500 Wisconsin schools participate.