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At the Evidence Resource Center, we aim to help Pennsylvania’s school communities thoughtfully apply high-quality, relevant research to their own settings. Explore these topics to brush up on research basics, ESSA tiers, and the fundamentals of evidence-based decision making.

ESSA Legislation

See also:

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

ESSA is the 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESSA advances ESEA’s promise of ensuring that all students – from pre-kindergarten to postsecondary, including low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, English Learners, and other historically marginalized students – have access to a world-class education that prepares them for college, career, and life.

ESSA encourages schools to learn about the effectiveness of the strategies they are considering implementing. Some ESSA programs require that schools use strategies with evidence from more rigorous studies.

ESSA in Pennsylvania

For Pennsylvania, ESSA presents two important opportunities – the chance to move away from the prescriptive policies and unintended consequences of NCLB, and toward state-level efforts that enjoy broad, bipartisan support, including more equitable and predictable funding for public schools and valid measures of school performance that look beyond standardized test scores.

Evidence is a powerful tool to identify ways to address education problems and build knowledge on what works.
US Department of Education Non-Regulatory Guidance: Using Evidence to Strengthen Education Investments (2016)

The ESSA Tiers

ESSA provides a definition of evidence so that schools and school leaders can confidently select tools that are likely to help them reach their goals. They do so in four distinct tiers – each one with its own criteria. The stronger the ESSA tier, the more high-quality the evidence to support the intervention's effect on a given outcome.

WHAT IS AN “EVIDENCE-BASED” INTERVENTION?

(from section 8101(21)(A) of the ESEA)

“…the term ‘evidence-based,’ when used with respect to a State, local educational agency, or school activity, means an activity, strategy, or intervention that –

  1. demonstrates a statistically significant effect on improving student outcomes or other relevant outcomes based on –
    1. strong evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented experimental study;
    2. moderate evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented quasi-experimental study; or
    3. promising evidence from at least one well-designed and well-implemented correlational study with statistical controls for selection bias; or
    1. demonstrates a rationale based on high-quality research findings or positive evaluation that such activity, strategy, or intervention is likely to improve student outcomes or other relevant outcomes; and
    2. includes ongoing efforts to examine the effects of such activity, strategy, or intervention.

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Further Reading

These publications, articles, and videos may be helpful in understanding and communicating about this topic: