Research and Evaluation Team

Following the push to improve science literacy and implement science education programs in the 1970s, organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have worked fervently to develop programs aimed at reforming science education and increasing science literacy among America’s students. The emergence of teacher-scientist partnerships in K-12 classrooms has proven influential in broadening teachers’ content knowledge, understanding of scientific inquiry, and increasing teachers’ confidence in their abilities to teach science. Unfortunately, research exploring how these partnerships impact teachers’ identities, in general, and teachers’ self-efficacy, pedagogical practices, and identities as scientists, more specifically, has remained limited.

In order to better understand the current state of the Arlington Public Schools' 1:1 program transition, the district partnered with the Friday Institute Research and Evaluation (FIRE) team at North Carolina State University to conduct a small-scale study. The purpose of the study was to identify implementation successes and challenges and to signal opportunities for program growth moving forward.

This report tells the story of the development of the Aligning Educational Efforts initiative, which was created to help Alexander, Burke, and Catawba Counties better connect and coordinate education and workforce goals across their region. The John M. Belk Endowment commissioned this report to capture lessons learned from that experience and to provide guidance for other North Carolina communities that want to develop similar plans for their regions. While some of the strategies and lessons learned highlighted in this report are specific to conditions in the region for which the plan was developed, we believe that many of them will be useful in a wide array of community contexts.

Digital inequities—or the divide amongst students who have and do not have access to digital resources —has become a national concern among K-12 educators in recent years. Research has documented the impacts of differential access to technology, however, as many districts and schools across the country move closer to fully transitioning to digital-age learning, digital inequity among K-12 students has become a more salient concern.

This brief highlights nine key lessons from the case study “Becoming Embedded In What We Do” The Implementation and Impact of the Learning Differences Program at Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School in Raleigh, North Carolina. In analyzing the data, the Friday Institute found nine key lessons from CCMMS Learning Differences program implementation that may help future schools and districts as they design their implementation strategies, namely:

This evaluation report—the fourth and final one commissioned by the North Carolina State Board of Education—summarizes qualitative results from the third year of the initiative and quantitative analyses from the first two years of implementation. In general, most of the qualitative indicators were again positive, and in the areas for which one-year and two-year quantitative estimations were possible there also were continuing signs of positive outcomes.

Background and Purpose In 2016, the North Carolina General Assembly provided support for school districts across North Carolina to propose and implement pilot advanced teaching…

Massive Online Open Courses for Educators (MOOC-Eds) provide a new form of professional development for educators that balances research-based practices for high-quality professional development with new types of social learning. In this paper we consider the value that educators find through their participation in a Learning Differences MOOC-Ed and examine the design elements of the MOOC-Ed that supported their growth and impact on practice.

This case study details the implementation and impact of the Learning Differences program at Manning Elementary School (MES) in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Section one provides an overview of the Learning Differences program. Section two describes how the Learning Differences program was implemented at MES and how data were collected. Section three draws on qualitative and quantitative data to illustrate the program’s impact on MES teachers and students. Section four discusses the seven key lessons learned from the implementation process. The authors intend for this case study to be a practical resource that schools and districts can reference as they implement their own learning differences initiatives.