A recent randomized study evaluated the effectiveness of a summer program to recover credits in high school, comparing two delivery modes: online vs. in-class directed by a teacher. Students who failed the Algebra I or English 9 courses from schools in Los Angeles were randomly assigned to receive the credit recovery program online or in-class. For the Algebra course, 305 students were assigned to the online delivery and 308 to the in-class program. For the English course, 564 students were assigned to the online delivery and 560 to the in-class program. The researchers used three measures of impact: credit recovery rates at the end of the program; district PSAT math and reading tests; and a researcher-made end-of-course test to evaluate student outcomes. The results of the latter may be overestimated due to the type of measure used and are not reported in this summary. For the Algebra course, results showed...

Executive function (EF) refers to a set of self-regulatory skills to consciously guide thoughts, actions, and emotions towards achieving goals. EF includes the cognitive aspect (“cool” EF) and the affective aspect (“hot” EF). Cool EF involves working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, while hot EF involves decision making based on emotions. In a recent study, Chen and Yeung compared how hot EF and cool EF link to academic skills across various ethnic groups of preschoolers in Singapore: Chinese, Malays, and Indians. Cool EF was represented by working memory (WM) and hot EF by delay of gratification (DoG) in the study. Two wave data were collected from a Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study in 2018/19 and two years later (2021). The study sample consisted of 2,527 children (70.7% Chinese, 19.9% Malays, 12.4% Indians) aged 36-83 months (M=58.9) during the first wave. Each child completed the WM and DoG tasks, and...

Recently, the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) produced a systematic review on the effectiveness of Reading Apprenticeship, a professional development program that can be delivered online or in person. The program leads teachers to help their students develop reading comprehension and acquire interest, engagement, and confidence in reading. It also aims to enhance social-emotional learning, as well as academic achievement in math, reading, science and social sciences for middle and high school students. This review focuses on the effects on academic achievement. Five out of the nine studies located from a literature search met the WWC inclusion criteria. The selected studies were randomized control trials involving a total of 22,176 American students in grade 7-9. The most assessed outcomes were reading comprehension (n=5) and literacy achievement (n=3); mathematics achievement was assessed by two studies; science, general academic achievement, social sciences, and vocabulary were assessed only by one study, and life sciences...

A high-dosage math tutoring program, modeled after Saga Education in the U.S., was developed in the Netherlands through a collaboration of schools, funders and providers to support students from low-income families. The program was delivered by a tutor to student pairs four times a week for an entire school year. In the sessions tutors reviewed mathematical concepts introduced by the teachers to the whole class, as well as personalized the instruction based on student needs. A recent evaluation assessed the effectiveness of this program in fourth and fifth grade. The study randomly assigned 434 students to the experimental group or to the control group for one school year. Using the national math and reading tests to assess the effectiveness of the program, results showed a significant improvement in math achievement (ES = +0.28) in both grade 4 and 5. No effects were found in reading. The authors’ conclusion affirms that...

Need for cognition refers to an individual’s preference for engaging in effortful cognitive activities. Given that it is an important factor about individual differences that may impact and correlate with academic achievement, Liu and Nesbit recently conducted a meta-analysis to investigate whether students with a higher need for cognition tend to demonstrate better academic performance than those with a lower need.  They also assessed the moderating effects of 14 factors about research context, methodology, and instrumentation. This meta-analysis included studies that 1) reported measurable learning outcomes in cognitive domains, 2) involved the participants from K-12 or post-secondary levels, 3) were published in English and publicly accessible, 4) were peer-reviewed publications, theses, and dissertations, and 5) reported sufficient quantitative data for calculating effect sizes. After applying these inclusion criteria, this study identified 136 effect sizes with 53,258 participants from 122 eligible articles. The results showed a small positive association between the...

“Raffi and his Friends” is a peer-assisted strategy delivered as a whole-class program that consists of 20 structured lessons in which the instructors use the strategies of clarifying, questioning, and predicting to support student reading comprehension. Student dyads are created by matching students with high and low reading skills in order to allow them to work in heterogeneous groups. A recent evaluation published in Contemporary Educational Psychology assessed the effectiveness of this program in third grade in Germany. The study matched 11 classes (187 students) in the experimental group with 10 classes (177 students) in the control group. The study used independent measures of fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension to assess the effectiveness of the program. The intervention was delivered by research assistants supervised by the development team, thus results could differ in the program implementation with regular teachers. The results showed a significant improvement in the reading measures administered...

In a recent study published in School Psychology International, Lei and colleagues conducted a three-level meta-analysis to investigate the relationship between teacher-student relationships (TSR) and student academic achievement (SAA) in China. The authors believed the positive link between TSR and student academic achievement is higher in hierarchical, collective China than egalitarian, individualistic western society as teachers have greater authority in China than in Western societies, and teachers are often the centre of TSR. With the greater respect of authority among Chinese students, the link between TSR-SAA could be higher compared to Western countries. The study included 74 studies (90 effect sizes) that examined the TSR-SAA correlation in the Chinese context published between 2002 and 2020 which involved both primary school and secondary school students. The results found Overall, significant positive correlation between teacher-student relation and student academic achievement (r = 0.26) was found among Chinese studies, which is larger than...

“Evidence-based,” a currently popular concept, assumes that identifying the high-quality interventions with valid positive results will enhance educational outcomes on a widespread scale. Clearinghouses (CHs) push this process forward by setting their chosen scientific criteria, evaluating studies of the required quality, synthesizing the study results, and proposing recommendations. To probe into the consistency of the meanings of “evidence-based” in different CHs, Cook and colleagues recently examined 12 educational clearinghouses to (1) compare their effectiveness criteria, (2) estimate how consistently they evaluate the same program, and (3) analyze why their evaluations differ. How variable are CHs in their effectiveness criteria? All the CHs value randomized control trials (RCT) as the preferred experimental design, but they vary in how they test whether an RCT is well-implemented enough to deserve the highest study-quality ranking. Quasi-experimental designs were treated more variably than RCTs based on separate standards for different categories. Additionally, different CHs place...

Differences in achievement levels among subgroups of students are referred to as “excellence gaps,” which primarily concern the highest-performing students. While certain students may struggle to attain the minimum expected levels of academic achievement, there are others who are already performing at levels beyond their current grade before the beginning of the school year. Excellence gaps are connected to equitable school systems. Often students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds have less access to advanced learning opportunities than their peers. A recent systematic review included qualitative and quantitative studies to determine what kind of research has been conducted on strategies to reduce excellence gaps in K-12. The review included 80 studies categorized by strategy, such as school accountability system support, teacher professional learning, and universal screening with local norms. The review highlighted the role of each strategy in reducing excellence gaps. Overall, results suggested considering four key points: Prepare, Place, Evaluate, and...