Research Brief
Summary of Recommendations for Re-opening Schools During the Covid-19 Pandemic
This brief summarizes recommendations, included in six key publications, for states and school districts to consider when re-opening public schools within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each publication has a particular orientation to school re-opening. However, 12 key recommendations emerged for states and school districts to consider as they plan for the 2020- 2021 […]
Summary of Podcast: School’s In, Beyond tests and quizzes: Getting creative with assessment during COVID-19
This brief summarizes the Stanford University podcast, School’s In, Beyond tests and quizzes: Getting creative with assessment during COVID-19. The podcast guest, Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo, is GSE Associate Professor and Director of Stanford’s Laboratory of Educational Assessment, Research and Innovation (LEARN). The podcast focuses on teachers’ ability to assess students’ learning at a time when […]
Literature Review on Family Engagement Goals and Strategies
Family engagement and empowerment are an important priority for SFUSD to enhance students’ educational experiences by involving their families in the schooling process. This memo serves as a brief literature review to inform parental engagement strategies and empowerment components of the district strategic plan. To help frame this review, I will focus on two guiding […]
Levinson, A. Tapping In: Understanding how recently immigrated Hispanic- Latino families engage and learn with media
Through ethnographic and quantitative data, Stanford researcher Amber Levinson examines the language and literacy experiences of low-income Latino immigrant families during the 2013-14 academic year. All families were also provided with iPads and selected apps, to examine how families took up these media tools. This brief highlights selected findings and implications from the study. Research […]
Interventions for Students and Teachers to Counter Stereotyping and Improve Student Outcomes: A Summary of Five Journal Articles
This research brief summarizes five journal articles focused on the negative consequences of racial and other demographic stereotypes for students’ academic and life outcomes. These articles also offer interventions to remedy stereotyping including: 1) teacher training focused on understanding and overcoming one’s own possible bias related to students’ gender, ethnicity, or ELL status; 2) institutions, […]
Racial Concentration and School Effectiveness in SFUSD
From 2010, this brief explores SFUSD’s efforts to address the achievement gap between historically underserved and other students by investigating the relationship between the racial concentration of students and school effectiveness.
History of the K-5 Student Assignment System
This brief summarizes The History of the K-5 Student Assignment System by Kyle Beckham and Leah Gordon. The researchers analyzed over two thousand pages of San Francisco Unified School District documents related to student assignment policies, dated from the late 1990’s through 2014. The findings were presented to the San Francisco Board of Education in […]
Early Warning Systems in Action
The first year of high school is challenging for students (Felmlee, 2018). Research indicates that, during that year, students are more likely to show declines in key measures of school engagement and academic success including Grade Point Average (GPA) and attendance rate, both of which are predictive of high school graduation (e.g., Allensworth et al., […]
Early Warning Systems in Action
Examining Attendance Patterns for SFUSD Students in Mission Promise Neighborhood Schools: 2013-14 Through 2016-17
The Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN) in San Francisco offers coordinated supports and services to help children and families connected to the Mission neighborhood achieve health, education, and economic goals. The Mission Economic Development Agency and San Francisco Unified School District partnered with the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University […]