A recent switched-replication randomized study by Jones and Li evaluated the effect of Future Forward on school attendance, social-emotional learning, and reading outcomes. Future Forward is a program that pairs paraprofessionals with early elementary students to provide one-on-one literacy tutoring for three 30-minute sessions per week. Additionally, a family engagement coordinator organizes events and communicates with families about student progress throughout the program. The study was conducted in three schools that partnered with their local Boys and Girls Club to implement the intervention. Study participants included students in kindergarten through grade 3. Participants were randomly assigned to receive the Future Forward intervention (n=65) or business as usual instruction (n=62). The intervention was implemented from October 2021 to January 2022, with the average student participating in 25.5 sessions, or 2.6 30-minute sessions per week. Additionally, on average, program staff engaged with families 1.5 times each month. The results indicated: Students in...

Gender stereotypes in math, which refers to the belief that men have superior math ability than women, can harm female students' math competence beliefs. Similarly, students’ beliefs that math ability is inborn and does not change much with effort (fixed mindset) can weaken their competence beliefs. Lee and colleagues investigated the impact of two interventions on parents and students’ math beliefs. A sample of 467 grade three and grade four students (mean age = 9.43 years, 53.3% girl) in 20 classes and their parents (over 88% mothers) at three elementary schools in Korea were randomly assigned in class units to intervention (11 classes) and control conditions (9 classes). The intervention was divided into two parts, one for parents (Intervention-P) and the other for students (Intervention-S). In Intervention-P, parents of the intervention group received two letters each week for three consecutive weeks from August to September, while parents in the control...

A recent study published in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness examines the effectiveness of sending teacher-written postcards home to reduce absences in preschool through second grade. The authors implemented a randomized intervention across schools and classrooms in two urban school districts involving an analysis sample of 5,552 students in preschool through second grade with no significant differences in pretreatment characteristics between the treatment and control groups. For intervention group, following an absence, school staff sent postcards to parents detailing how many days of school their child had missed, alongside a handwritten note from their teacher summarizing the academic material covered during the absence. In the control classrooms, no changes were made to how teachers addressed absences. Analysis sample included absence record of students during a 13 school-week. Results showed that the treatment reduced absences by 0.45 days (95% CI, 0.14–0.76) relative to the control mean of 5.42 days...

Exclusion, encompassing various ways students can be removed from school settings (e.g., suspension and expulsion) for behavioral reasons (e.g., too disruptive or dangerous), has been adopted by educational practitioners for more than two decades. Existing studies have shown that children are more likely to be excluded from early child care and education (ECCE) settings than from K-12. Zinsser and colleagues did a systematic review of early childhood exclusionary discipline to synthesize its current state, causes, negative consequences, and interventions to reduce its use. Findings of the review: Current studies have not reached a consensus on the terminology and definition of exclusion. Future studies should incorporate terminology that enables them to include all types of exclusionary practices and discuss connections between them. Factors of exclusionary discipline: teachers’ wellness and emotional health, the role of parents, and the parent-teacher relationship. Exclusion from ECCE settings might have severe negative consequences, such as lowering...

Absenteeism is negatively associated with student outcomes. It is now a problem faced by many schools in the District of Columbia. Many schools have tried various strategies of engaging families to reduce or prevent absenteeism, including two-way communications about students’ attendance. Recently, a group of researchers from the Office of the City Administrator conducted an experiment to evaluate an application, TeacherText, which is specifically designed for teachers to engage families in two-way communications. The experiment involved 57 administrators and teachers and 2,229 students randomly divided into treatment and control groups across six public secondary schools in DC. For the ethical consideration that all students and their families should have the opportunity to receive some messages, administrators in both groups could use TeacherText to send messages to students and families. Treatment teachers were also given permission to do so, while control teachers were not. The experiment lasted for one semester (2019-2020)....

A recent pretest-training-posttest study of three-year-old numerical development by Orrantia and colleagues provides insight on the role of finger patterns in the acquisition of cardinality. The study consisted of 51 children randomly assigned to one of two separate classrooms, each with a similarly qualified teacher. The instructional technique practiced in the first classroom consisted of the teacher first labeling a set’s quantity on flashcard for the class, then having the class count the set aloud while the teacher pointed to each item, and finally having the children point to their own cards, count, and label. The authors identified this as the label-count-label (LCL) condition and effectively used this classroom as the control group. The technique in the second classroom followed the same pattern, but each step was supplemented with the teacher and students holding up the corresponding number of fingers for each quantity, which the authors identified as the LCL-plus-finger...

Due to the rapid development of information technology, acquiring programming knowledge is growing in prominence, and computation thinking becomes a fundamental skill for children just like reading and math. Using the Two-Tier Test-Based Programming Training (T3PT) approach, Hwang and Tung developed an online learning system for beginners and conducted a quasi-experiment to examine the effect of the system on secondary school students’ computer programming learning. The Two-Tier Test-Based Programming Training (T3PT) consists of two tiers of questions: The first tier assesses students’ understanding of the programming concept The second tier investigates the reasons for students’ choice in the first tier test to detect whether students have misconceptions about the programming. The learning system then, based on students’ responses, provides timely precise feedback to students to enhance their understanding of the correct concepts of programming logic. Two classes of 99 eighth grade students (mean age = 14.2) from Taiwan were divided...

A recent study published in the Review of Educational Research examined the relative effectiveness of combining real and virtual experiments versus a single type of experimentation, and which sequence of real and virtual experiments was most effective for the acquisition of scientific literacy. In contrast to previous reviews focusing on a comparison of real experiments (RE, hands-on with actual materials) versus virtual experiments (VE, interactive computer simulation), in this review the authors focused on the effects of combining RE and VE. The results were based on a sample of 42 studies meeting the inclusion criteria set. In relation to the relative effectiveness of combining real and virtual experiments compared with a single type of experimentation, the results showed that: Twenty-five of the 30 studies reported a significant advantage of the experimental groups that used RE and VE in combination, compared to control groups that used only one single experiment type...

Research shows that students of color and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are disproportionately represented among those receiving special education services. Although special education is meant to provide students with individualized support, qualifying for special education services may negatively impact student outcomes. For example, teachers and parents may hold students in special education to low academic and behavioral standards. Further, students may perceive a stigma associated with receiving special education services. Thus, it is important to provide students with the proper support to decrease the likelihood that they will be incorrectly assigned to special education. Hingstman and colleagues conducted a systematic review of programs that tested whether they decreased the number of elementary school students assigned to special education. The review included 12 studies evaluating nine programs: four targeted academic and behavioral skills, three focused on academics, and two focused on behavior. The authors found that programs that included following...