Equality of Educational Opportunity, the 1966 landmark study by James Coleman and colleagues, persists as a seminal source for continuing research on schools and students achievement. A new research paper by Adam Gamoran and Daniel A. Long takes a look at what things are like 40 years on.

Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street wants to increase the number of FAST parent education programs in the city as part of a new anti-truancy initiative.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has awarded WCER's Families and Schools Together (FAST) Program its "exemplary" rating.

Surveys of Enacted Curriculum is an interactive site that encourages teacher reflection and conversation about classroom practice and instructional content.

WCER's Families and Schools Together project (FAST) uses webcasts to train administrators and team members who disseminate the program throughout the country.

Eric Camburn and colleagues are evaluating a professional development program for school principals, the National Institute for School Leadership.

Another WCER Working Paper has been posted.

The WCER Working Paper Series has two additions.

Families and Schools Together, an 8-week program for families and children held in school and community locations, is cited for its effectiveness in the Harvard Family Research Project October 2006 report.

Do principals who receive high ratings under standards-based evaluation systems have a more positive impact on elements of school culture?

Effective reading and behavior strategies that intervene early enough can help improve reading and behavior skills for students with disabilities.

States or school districts interested in using standards-based teacher evaluation as the basis for a knowledge- and skill-based pay system may want to consider these steps.

A study directed by Allan Odden seeks to determine the adequate level of spending on education for an average child in Wisconsin.

Educators of English language learners (ELLs) have a powerful resource for planning curriculum and assessment.

A voluntary summer school program helps prevent students from falling behind over the summer and can improve students' longitudinal learning outcomes.

Two new Working Papers have been published, by Richard Halverson and by Geoffrey Borman and James Benson.

The Freudenthal Institute-USA is a collaboration among WCER, the Freudenthal Institut-University of Utrecht, and the University of Colorado-Boulder. At the Institute, researchers, K-12 mathematics teachers, and curriculum developers are working side by side to create classroom mathematics assessments, design comparative achievement studies and develop curricula, among other activites.

A recent study by WCER researcher Tony Milanowski and colleagues contradicts writings on teacher performance evaluation that have argued for the benefits of assigning different evaluators to summative and formative evaluations.

David Williamson Shaffer promotes the value of epistemic games in education—games requiring students to make, apply, and share knowledge.

Classroom teacher Amy French and WCER researcher Mitchell Nathan have collaborated for several years on early algebra instruction, and have coauthored a chapter in the volume "Teachers Engaged in Research."

Kimber Malmgren and colleagues are studying curriculum, assessment, and accountability in correctional educational schools for committed youth and secondary day treatment and residential psychiatric schools.

Richard Halverson explores a distributed leadership perspective on how leaders create contexts that build and support professional communities in schools.

Sara Goldrick-Rab is coauthor of the forthcoming book, “Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access for the Poor.”

Effective teaching portfolios are created according to four basic ideas. A Teaching Portfolio Guidebook has been developed for teacher-researchers in the UW-Madison DELTA program.

The project Diversity in Mathematics Education Center for Learning and Teaching (DiME) has posted titles and author contact information for 17 presentations given so far this year.

The Center for Integrating Research on Teaching and Learning now offers its CIRTL Guidebook Collection on line.

Improving U.S. education is central to WCER's mission, but there's much to be learned from education in other countries.

Beginning in the fall, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction Beth Graue will assume the role of WCER Director of Graduate Training.

Alternate Routes to Technology and Science (ARTS) offers K-12 students technology-based learning environments based on professional practices.

Mitchell J. Nathan and Kristi Jackson have posted "Boolean Classes and Qualitative Inquiry."

With help from the Institute for Learning, and WCER's SCALE project, the Providence Public School district is implementing Disciplinary Literacy in mathematics as a framework to increase the instructional capacity of schools and teachers.

WCER's SCALE staff are collaborating with the Madison Metropolitan School district on building equity and excellence in freshman science.

Some authors have cautioned against designing instructional methods and materials in math based on constructivist principles for less capable students.

How is the work of managing and leading schools distributed among people in schools? An exclusive focus on formally designated leaders may miss an important dimension of how the work of leading and managing schools is distributed among staff.

More than 150 UW-Madison faculty, academic staff, and graduate students presented at this year's annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Students who attend Success for All (SFA) schools for 3 years gained substantially more in reading skills than similar students in other schools, according to a federally funded study led by UW-Madison education professor Geoffrey Borman.

A new working paper has been posted. Mitchell J. Nathan and Kristen N. Bieda investigate middle school mathematics students' views and interpretations of graphical representations as they use graphs to answer algebraic questions.

Terry Millar, a principal investigator of WCER's SCALE project has received a Madison Metropolitan School District Distinguished Service Award.

The Interdisciplinary Training Program (ITP) in the Education Sciences at the UW-Madison addresses the need for solid evidence about what educational policies and programs will most benefit students, and the neeed for skilled researchers who can carry out that research.

Longitudinal Data Systems to Support Data-Informed Decision Making: A Tri-State Partnership Between Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, by Christopher A. Thorn and Robert H. Meyer, has been posted.

WCER’s Systemwide Change for All Learners and Educators (SCALE) project makes 13 research reports available.

The new VARC Blog, administered by Chris Thorn, supports the discussion of value-added analysis in education, including growth models of student learning and robust designs for program and policy evaluation.

In the recent article "The Merits of Training Mentors" (Science Magazine, 27 January) Christine Pfund and colleagues highlight the success of their graduate student mentor training program, the Wisconsin Mentoring Seminar.

What does it cost to adequately fund K-12 education in Wisconsin? With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation of New York, Allan Odden and colleagues in WCER’s Consortium for Policy Research in Education are determining the costs of educational adequacy.

The World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium designs and implements high standards and equitable educational opportunities for English Languge Learners.

A new section of this site gathers together several years' worth of cover stories to make it easier to find answers to specific questions, for example, "What does the research say about mathematics education and professional development?" Click on the "What's the Research" link on the sidebar to find articles about specific topics.

In many cases, students with disabilities who participate in alternate assessments receive curriculum and instruction that differ from those received by other students. The mainstream tests don't accurately measure the academic achievement of students with disabilities. It's important to know how well alternate assessments align with the curriculum and instruction provided to students with disabilities.

Rob Meyer, Elizabeth Graue, and Patricia Burch are identifying educational practices that raise student achievement in Wisconsin SAGE schools (Student Achievement Guarantee in Education). Their research is framed by an integrated qualitative and quantitative approach and includes five research strands.

It is the rare educational leader who is able to negotiate the local tangle of tradition and politics to successfully improve learning for students. New methods and new technologies are needed, and Richard Halverson is developing tools to access, represent, and communicate successful instructional leadership practice for school leaders.

Schools across the nation face tremendous challenges as they seek to raise student achievement and reduce persistent performance gaps in core academic areas. To address these challenges in Illinois and Wisconsin, WCER and Learning Point Associates will co-operate a newly funded Great Lakes West Regional Comprehensive Center. WCER also adds to its family of projects the World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium, dedicated to the design and implementation of high standards and equitable educational opportunities for English language learners.

Adding Value to the Mathematics and Science Partnership Evaluations is a WCER project that provides technical assistance to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Mathematics and Science Partnership (MSP) program, a massive effort to produce improved student learning in mathematics, science, technology, and engineering (STEM).