How promising are college “promise programs”?

The Detroit Promise is a program administered by the Detroit Regional Chamber that provides the city’s high school graduates with scholarships for state-funded universities and community colleges. To encourage students to stay in school once enrolled and to improve their academic outcomes, the Chamber and MDRC partnered to create the “Detroit Promise Path.” This initiative adds four components to the existing scholarship program: campus coaches who help students navigate academic and personal issues, monthly financial support contingent on meeting with coaches, enhanced summer engagement, and monitoring and messages informed by behavioral science through a management information system created by MDRC.

MDRC is evaluating the Detroit Promise Path using a randomized controlled trial design. In a new report, Alyssa Ratledge presents early findings from a pilot cohort of students who enrolled in fall 2016. According to the report:

• The Detroit Promise Path was implemented with fidelity to the model and participation was high. More than 95 percent of students responded to coaches’ outreach and two-thirds of enrolled students met with coaches as directed.
• Students appreciate the program. Ninety-six percent of surveyed students who had been in contact with a coach said the program was “valuable” or “very valuable” to them.
• The program had a sizable impact on enrollment in the second semester and on full-time enrollment in the first and second semesters.

Insights on personalized learning

As part of a recent study for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, RAND Corporation researchers have tried to identify what personalized learning (PL) looks like in a small sample of schools that are using PL approaches schoolwide.

This report  describes the concept and implementation of personalized learning, along with some of the challenges, and considers how PL affects achievement in these schools. To measure how PL affects achievement, John F. Pane and colleagues analyzed math and reading scores for all students in the sample (approximately 5,500 pupils) who took the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress assessments (approximately 5,500 pupils) who took the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress assessments. They found positive effect sizes of approximately +0.09 in math and +0.07 in reading relative to a comparison group of similar students.

Based on the findings from the study, the researchers offer the following recommendations for implementing PL:

• Provide teachers with resources and time to pilot new teaching approaches and gather evidence of how well they work
• Provide teachers with time and resources to collaborate on developing curriculum material and on reviewing and scoring student work
• Identify a school staff member who is comfortable with technology and has curriculum expertise to serve as a “just-in-time” resource for teachers
• Provide resources and support for school staff to help them choose the most appropriate digital or non-digital curriculum materials
• Provide resources and support for school staff to integrate multiple data systems

Impact of teacher mentors

A study published by the Institute of Education Sciences evaluates the impact of the Retired Mentors for New Teachers program – a two-year program in which recently retired teachers provide tailored mentoring to new teachers – on student achievement, teacher retention, and teacher evaluation ratings. The new teachers meet with their mentors weekly on a one-to-one basis and monthly in school-level groups over the course of the two years.

Dale DeDesare and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 77 teachers at 11 elementary schools in Aurora, Colorado. Within each school, half of the new teachers were randomly assigned to a control group to receive the district’s business-as-usual mentoring support, while the other half received the intervention as well as business-as-usual mentoring support.

The study found that at the end of the first year, students who were taught by teachers in the program group scored 1.4 points higher on the spring Measures of Academic Progress math assessment than those taught by teachers in the control group (effect size = +0.064), and this difference was statistically significant. Reading achievement was also higher among students taught by teachers in the program group, however, the difference was not statistically significant (effect size = +0.014 at the end of the first year and +0.07 at the end of the second year). The effect of the program on teacher evaluation ratings and teacher retention was not significant, although more teachers in the program group left after two years than in the control group.

Talking in class boosts progress in math, science, and English

An intervention that trained teachers to improve and monitor the quality of classroom talk had a positive impact on primary students’ test scores in English, math, and science, a report published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in the UK reveals.

Seventy-six primary schools with higher-than-average proportions of disadvantaged students took part in a randomized control trial of the Dialogic Teaching intervention, which is designed to improve the quality of classroom talk as a means of increasing students’ engagement, learning, and achievement. Year 5 (4^th grade in the U.S.) teachers in 38 schools (2,493 students), and a teacher mentor from each school, received resources and training from the delivery team, and then implemented the intervention over the course of the fall and spring terms in the 2015/16 school year. A control group of 38 schools (2,466 students) continued with business as usual. Following the intervention, students were tested in English, math, and science.

The results showed that students in the intervention schools did better in the main outcome measures of English (effect size = +0.16), science (+0.12), and math (+0.09) when compared with children in the control schools who didn’t receive the intervention. For students who received free school meals, the intervention had a higher impact on math (+0.16), but around the same for English (+0.12) and science (+0.11). Teachers reported positive effects on student engagement and confidence, and on the whole the intervention was highly regarded by participating schools. However, some teachers felt that it would take longer than two terms to fully embed a Dialogic Teaching approach in their classrooms.