The research reviews are aimed at collecting, analyzing, and easily returning to major research on an issue in education policy.

At a minimum, the review will attempt to summarize how the research was done and what it found and will include a link to the original article. In part these will serve as a sort of annotated file cabinet of research, saving the frustration of searching for an article that one read in the past and is suddenly very relevant to the issue at hand.

Unlike with a blog, we hope to save these articles but improve them over time. To this end, we welcome critiques: What other research should be mentioned? In trying to summarize both the method and the conclusion did we distort?

We hope to use the blog to announce new articles and major changes in articles.

The following reports are now available:

  • Charter school effectiveness describes the two most thorough multi-state comparisons of students' performance in charter schools compared to those in public schools. Supplements to this discuss:
    • How to use the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to evaluate charters.
    • Two studies of New York City charter schools.
  • What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) describes the challenges in using research to measure the effectiveness of interventions. A supplement uses the example of two elementary mathemantics programs.
  • Value-added measures discusses the progress of these models to evaluate schools, programs and teachers.
  • Early elementary reading instruction describes research on reading instruction in kindergarten to third grade.