The WWC recently reviewed the research on the impacts of first year experience courses for students in developmental education and found that existing research on the practice shows no discernible effects on academic achievement, progress through developmental education, and credit accumulation and persistence for postsecondary students. Read the full report and learn more about the study that...
Do universal pre-K programs work?
There is another issue she does not mention: it can be be difficult, if not impossible, to successfully bring to scale those small interventions that work under carefully controlled contexts. The problem is that there’s no evidence that universal pre-K comes even close to its touted capacity to move the needle for disadvantaged children. Pre-K advocates widely cite two well-run demonstration...
Cheap educational interventions
Dynarski’s column in the NY Times is always a must-read. Here, she talks about simple and cheap ways, such as text messages, to change student outcomes. This is the real issue: Why aren’t schools, districts and states rushing to set up these measures? Maybe because the programs have no natural constituency. They are not labor- or capital-intensive, so they don’t create lots of jobs or...