Using experience gained by facilitating the determination of root causes in schools and in industrial settings, as well as lessons from research and literature both within and outside of education, this paper provides a recommend process, and detailed protocols and tools for defining problems to be investigated and determining their root causes.

The problems faced within education resemble the problems in many social settings in that they lack clear definitions, have many potential causes, lack simple solutions, and defy straightforward measurement. In this article, Andrew Hegedus shares a view on the types of problems faced in education and outlines key characteristics of a process that begins with collecting data and ends with evaluating progress.

This study examines the academic growth of 35,000 elementary and middle school students in 31 states—all of them high achievers within their own schools—over a three-year period.

Most of us believe that when individuals have goals, their performance improves, and this belief is being put to the test in schools today. In an effort to create alignment between district and school improvement efforts, teachers are more likely than ever to have formal performance goals.

This study compares reading growth for students with visual impairments with a nationally normed group of students from the general population using data from the NWEA MAP Growth assessment.

This study examined developmental trends in academic achievement gaps between poverty and race/ethnicity groups from school entry to middle school using two large longitudinal data sets. We used time-varying effect modeling (TVEM) to estimate how the associations among race/ethnicity, poverty status, and math and reading achievement vary across continuous age from age 5 to age 15.

This study examines whether test effort differs by student subgroup, including by race and gender. The sensitivity of achievement gap estimates to any differences in test effort is also considered.