Publications

Research has found that peers influence the academic achievement of children. However, the mechanisms through which peers matter remain underexplored. The present study examined the relationship between peers’ reading skills and children’s own reading...

The authors conducted a cluster-randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of structured teacher adaptations to the implementation of an evidence-based summer literacy program that provided students with (a) books matched to their reading level and...

In a common approach for scaling up effective educational practice, schools adopt evidence-based programs to be implemented with fidelity. An alternative approach assumes that programs should be adapted to local contexts. In this randomized trial of a...

Theory and empirical work suggest that teachers’ social capital influences school improvement efforts. Social ties are prerequisite for social capital, yet little causal evidence exists on how malleable factors, such as instructional management approaches...

To improve the reading comprehension outcomes of children in high-poverty schools, policymakers need to identify reading interventions that show promise of effectiveness at scale. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a low-cost and large-scale summer...

This study examines the effects of four types of reading comprehension questions – immediate, non-immediate, summary, and unanswerable questions – that linguistically diverse and predominantly low-income parents asked their fourth graders on children’s...

Policymakers and economists have expressed support for the use of incentives in educational settings. In this paper, rather than asking whether incentives work, we focus on a different question: For whom and under what conditions do incentives work? This...

Prior research suggests that summer learning loss among low-income children contributes to income-based gaps in achievement and educational attainment. We present results from a randomized experiment of a summer mathematics program conducted in a large...

This study examined the efficacy of a supplemental, multicomponent adolescent reading intervention for middle school students who scored below proficient on a state literacy assessment. Using a within-school experimental design, the authors randomly...

A randomized trial involving 19 elementary schools (K–5) was conducted to replicate and extend two previous experimental studies of the effects of a voluntary summer reading program that provided (a) books matched to students’ reading levels and interests...

This meta-analysis reviewed research on summer reading interventions conducted in the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2011. The synthesis included 41 classroom- and home- based summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to...

In this study, 72 secondary English teachers from the Santa Ana Unified School District were randomly assigned to participate in the Pathway Project, a cognitive strategies approach to teaching interpretive reading and analytical writing, or to a control...