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Many high schools use online courses to allow students to retake failed classes in an effort to help get students back on track and graduate. However, there is limited evidence available on the effectiveness of online credit recovery in improving students' long-term outcomes compared with traditional face-to-face credit recovery courses. In this paper, we examine longer term outcomes for ninth graders who failed Algebra I and were randomly assigned to an online or face-to-face algebra credit recovery course. In particular, we look at math credits earned through four years of high school and rates of on-time graduation. We find no statistically significant differences in longer term outcomes between students in the online and face-to-face courses. Implications of these null findings are discussed.

After years evaluating teacher professional learning programs, researchers Andrew J. Wayne, Jordan Rickles, Mengli Song, Seth Brown, and Michael S. Garet describe a study that changed their perspective. The study’s takeaways about the design of teacher professional learning are important for everyone who seeks to create systems to support teaching and learning. The findings call attention to the value of streamlined, high-quality programs for improving performance outcomes for teachers and students.

Increased access to algebra was a focal point of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel's 2008 report on improving mathematics learning in the United States. Past research found positive effects for early access to algebra, but the focus on average effects may mask important variation across student subgroups. The author addresses whether these positive effects hold up when the analysis is expanded to examine effect heterogeneity. Using a nationally representative sample of eighth-grade students in 1988, the author examined sensitivity of findings to methods for selection bias adjustment, heterogeneity across the propensity to take algebra in Grade 8, and across schools. The findings support past research regarding positive benefits to Grade 8 algebra and are consistent with policies that increase access to algebra in middle school.

In response to the concerns White raises in his technical comment on Rickles, Heppen, Allensworth, Sorensen, and Walters (2018), we discuss whether it would have been appropriate to test for nominally equivalent outcomes, given that the study was initially conceived and designed to test for significant differences, and that the conclusion of no difference was not solely based on a null hypothesis test. To further support the article's conclusion, confidence intervals for the null hypothesis tests and a test of equivalence are provided.

Policymakers and practitioners are increasingly interested in students 'deeper learning skills, or the interpersonal and intrapersonal skills students need to succeed in school, careers, and civic life. This article presents evidence about whether the concept of deeper learning—applied across a variety of approaches—has potential merit as a means for education improvement. The analysis, based on 16 high schools implementing a school-wide approach to promoting deeper learning within the context of small schools, indicates that students who attended schools focused on deeper learning reported greater opportunities for deeper learning, greater competency in some deeper learning domains, had higher rates of graduating from high school, and were more likely to enroll in 4-year colleges than similar students who attended comparison schools.

When nonrandom treatments occur across sites, within-site matching (WM) is often desirable. This approach, however, can significantly reduce treatment group sample size and exclude substantively important subgroups. To limit these drawbacks, we extend a matching approach developed by Stuart and Rubin to a multisite study. We demonstrate the proposed method through a multisite analysis of algebra enrollment effects in 50 middle schools, where within each school students are assigned to algebra or pre-algebra and test the utility of the proposed method with a simulation study. The results document the method's conceptual appeal and indicate that two-stage matching is a viable alternative to strict WM or matching that ignores the nested data structure (pooled matching).

Most studies of nurse turnover focus on job turnover, which could reflect nurse advancement and thus not be detrimental to the workforce. The authors discuss findings from a study that involved 2 cohorts of graduates from registered nursing and licensed vocational nursing community college programs in California. The duration of employment in the healthcare industry, as well as with specific employers, is tracked, lending a more thorough analysis of nursing job and industry turnover than found in other studies.

In this study I present, demonstrate, and test a method that extends the Stuart and Rubin (2008) multiple control group matching strategy to a multisite setting. Three primary phases define the proposed method: (1) a design phase, in which one uses a two-stage matching strategy to construct treatment and control groups that are well balanced along both unit- and site-level key pretreatment covariates; (2) an adjustment phase, in which the observed outcomes for non-local control group matches are adjusted to account for differences in the local and non-local matched control units; and (3) an analysis phase, in which one estimates average causal effects for the treated units and investigates heterogeneity in causal effects through multilevel modeling. The main novelty of the proposed method occurs in the design phase, where propensity score matching is executed in two stages. In the first stage, treatment units are matched to control units within the same site. In the second stage, treatment units without an acceptable within-site match are matched to control units in another site (between-site match). The two-stage matching method provides researchers with an alternative to strict within-site matching or matching that ignores the nested data structure (pooled matching). I employ an empirical illustration and a set of simulation studies to test the utility and feasibility of the proposed two-stage matching method. The results document the two-stage matching method's conceptual appeal, but indicate that effect estimation under the two-stage matching method does not, in general, outperform more traditional matching-based or regression-based methods. Alternative specifications within the proposed method can improve performance of two-stage matching. In addition to extending the work of Stuart and Rubin, this study complements the small set of studies that have examined propensity score matching in multisite settings and provides guidance for researchers looking to estimate treatment effects from a multisite observational study. The dissertation concludes with directions for future research and considerations for researchers conducting multisite observational studies.

During the last 25 years, numerous studies have been conducted to promote breast cancer and cervical cancer screening. Most of these studies focused on individual-level factors predicting screening, but we are unaware of any that directly examined community and ecological influences. The goal of this project, Promoting Access to Health for Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian Women (PATH for Women), was to increase community capacity for breast and cervical cancer screening and follow up in Los Angeles and Orange counties. We focused on Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander women because, although they have the lowest rates for cancer, compared to all other ethnic groups, relatively few programs have specifically targeted Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women to promote and sustain screening practices. The PATH for Women project involved a partnership between 5 community-based organizations and 2 universities, and included 7 Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities: Cambodians, Chamorros, Laotians, Thais, Tongans, Samoans, and Vietnamese. In this paper, we share our experiences in developing a Geographic Information System (GIS)-mapping evaluation component that was used to explore availability and accessibility to culturally responsive breast and cervical cancer screening services for Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander women in all 7 communities. We describe the methods used to develop the maps, and present the preliminary findings that demonstrate significant geographic and language barriers to accessing healthcare providers, services for breast and cervical cancer screening, and follow up, in each of the communities. Finally, we discuss implications for programs designed to promote breast and cervical screening and policy education.

This article outlines the PATH program (Promoting Access to Health for Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian Women), initiated in Los Angeles, California, to increase community capacity for breast and cervical cancer screening and follow-up.