What Is Doing What Works?

Glossary

21st Century Community Learning Centers: A program developed by the U.S. Department of Education, which supports the creation of community learning centers that provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children, particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools.

504 Plan: A 504 plan is a legal document falling under the provisions of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It is designed to plan a program of instructional services to assist students with special needs who are in a regular education setting. A 504 plan is not an Individualized Education Program (IEP) as is required for special education students. However, a student moving from a special education to a regular education placement could be placed under a 504 plan.

Academic Summer School: An academic session, usually shorter in length than a normal academic term, and offered during the summer school break, to provide mandatory, remedial, or supplemental education.

Accuplacer: A college entrance exam that tests students' math, reading, and writing levels. Scores on this test, in conjunction with a student's academic background, goals, and interests, are used by academic advisors and counselors to determine course selection.

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): Adequate yearly progress (AYP) is an individual state's measure of progress towards the goal of all students, including all sub-groups of students, demonstrating proficiency in at least reading/language arts and mathematics on state achievement tests and on other academic measures, such as graduation rates or student attendance rates. It sets the minimum percent of proficiency (for example, 80% of students must be proficient) that the state, its school districts, and schools must achieve each year on state tests and related academic indicators.

Adult Advocates: Adult advocates are trained adults who are committed to investing in a student's personal and academic success. The adult advocate is responsible for monitoring and addressing the student's academic and social needs (which may involve connecting the student to services and resources), communicating with families, and advocating for the student. Adult advocates include teachers, counselors, absence or behavior monitors, administrators, and other community members or school staff who are willing to take on these responsibilities beyond their normally defined roles.

Advanced Placement (AP) Program: College-level courses and exams in various subject areas offered to high school students to accelerate their learning and prepare them for college. These 34 different subject matter courses are standardized by the College Board, and considered the most rigorous classes in U.S. high schools today.

Advisor: A teacher who provides advice and pushes students towards academic success.

After-School Program: An activity that provides education and recreation for students beyond school hours. Programs usually offer assistance with homework and tutoring in core curriculum areas in a safe, supervised setting.

Algebra: Although the Panel did not specifically define algebra in the final or task group reports, it discussed the essential topics needed to comprise an algebra course. (See also Authentic Algebra Course, Major Topics of School Algebra, and School Algebra.)

Algorithm: This term is commonly defined as a finite sequence of explicitly defined, step-by-step computational procedures that end in a clearly defined outcome. The most common algorithms in elementary school are the so-called standard algorithms for the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and long division of whole numbers. Mastery of standard algorithms is dependent on sufficient practice to help commit these procedural steps to long-term memory, at which point the algorithm can be executed automatically with little waste of mental energy (NMP Report, Chapter 4-xiv).

Alliteration: A sentence or phrase in which many of the words share a common initial sound; the repetition of the initial phoneme of each word in connected text (e.g., Harry the happy hippo hula-hoops with Henrietta).

Alphabet: The complete set of letters or symbols representing speech sounds used in writing a language or phonetic transcription.

Alphabetic Knowledge: The ability to recognize and identify the names and shapes of the letters of the alphabet. (See also Letter Knowledge.)

Alphabetic Principle: The concept that written language is a code in which letters represent the sounds in spoken words; letters and letter combinations represent individual phonemes in written words, letters represent sound, and printed letters can be turned into speech.

American College Test (ACT): A test that measures students' aptitude and skills in English, mathematics, reading, and natural science. The ACT is more often used in the Midwest, South, and Far West.

Anchored Instruction: A learning strategy that situates or "anchors" instruction in a realistic case study, or problem-solving situation.

Anxiety in Mathematics (also referred to as Mathematics Anxiety): The National Mathematics Panel used this term to mean an emotional reaction, ranging from mild apprehension up through genuine fear or dread, in academic and everyday situations that deal with numbers, for instance, taking a standardized achievement test, or figuring out a restaurant bill or change (NMP Report, Chapter 4-14).

Arithmetic: This term is commonly defined as mathematics that is concerned with the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) on specific whole numbers without any use of abstract symbols.

Assessment: A broad term used to describe the gathering of information about student performance in a particular area. (See also Formal Assessment, Informal Assessment, Standardized Test, and Progress Monitoring.)

Associate's Degree: A degree granted by a college or university for a program that requires two years of full-time study.

Associative Property: For school mathematics, this is the property that a collection of numbers, in a fixed order such as 4, 9, 7, 3, can be added or multiplied by grouping neighboring numbers in any way and the end result doesn't change. For example, if the operation is addition, then: (4+9) + (7+3) = (4+(9+7)) + 3 = 4 + ((9+7)+3) = 4 + (9+(7+3)) = ((4+9)+7) + 3, etc. (See also Commutative Property and Distributive Property.)

At-Risk Students: The term "at-risk students" is used to describe students who are "at risk" of failing academically for one or more reasons, including significant social-emotional or behavioral problems that can interfere with their academic performance. The term can be used to describe a wide variety of students from historically underperforming groups, such as minorities, academically disadvantaged students, disabled students, or students of low socioeconomic status. The term also applies to students who have been individually identified as at risk of failure due to their personal histories, such as students who were retained or students with a history of disciplinary referrals.

Auditory Discrimination: The ability to detect differences in sounds; this may be gross ability, such as detecting the differences between the noises made by a cat and dog, or fine ability, such as detecting the differences made by the sounds of letters "m" and "n."

Authentic Algebra Course: The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as an algebra course that addresses the Major Topics of School Algebra in a way that is consistent with the section on the Overview of School Algebra on pp. 3-6 to 3-15 of NMP Report, Chapter 3. (See also Major Topics of School Algebra and School Algebra.)

Automatic Recall: This term is commonly defined as the quick and effortless recall of arithmetic facts (e.g., addition and related subtraction facts and multiplication and related division facts). (See also Automaticity.)

Automaticity: The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as the fast, implicit, and automatic retrieval of a fact or a procedure from long-term memory (e.g., fast, accurate, and effortless performance on computation). For some types of information, including much of mathematics that is taught in school, automaticity is achieved only with specific types of experiences, including practice that is distributed across time. Automaticity should be gained with number facts and basic rules of arithmetic (e.g., addition and subtraction up to 20 and the multiplication table up to 10x10), and with things such as applying distributive, associative, and commutative laws (NMP Report, Chapter 4-5). (See also Automatic Recall.)

Bachelor's Degree: A degree granted by a college or university for a program that requires four or five years of full-time study.

Background Knowledge: The knowledge and experience that readers bring to the text; the ability to form connections between the text being read and the information and experiences of the reader. (Also referred to as Prior Knowledge.)

Benchmark: A benchmark is a point of reference by which something can be measured.

Benchmarks for the Critical Foundations: The benchmarks suggested by the National Mathematics Panel are grade levels by which a particular mathematics skill should be achieved. They address fluency with whole numbers, fluency with fractions, and particular aspects of geometry and measurement, and are intended as guideposts for state frameworks, state assessments, and school districts (NMP Report, Chapter 3-42). (See also Critical Foundations of Algebra.)

Blending: Putting together individual sounds to make spoken words (e.g., the sounds /d/ /o/ /g/ can be blended to produce the word dog).

Block Schedule: Block schedules are a type of academic scheduling in which each student has fewer classes per day for a longer period of time. Block schedules are usually implemented to reduce transition time between classes and subjects and to provide opportunities for teachers to develop a more flexible and productive classroom environment, and use varied and interactive teaching methods.

Block Scheduling: Block schedules are a type of academic scheduling in which each student has fewer classes per day for a longer period of time.

Block schedules are usually implemented to reduce transition time between classes and subjects and to provide opportunities for teachers to develop a more flexible and productive classroom environment and use varied and interactive teaching methods. Some types of block schedules (4 X 4's) enable students to complete an entire yearlong course in one semester, which can be an effective strategy for providing additional preparatory or remedial coursework or credit recovery (see definition below). However, block scheduling can be ineffective or problematic if not implemented correctly.

Calculus: A branch of mathematics that studies limits, including the topics of differentiation, integration, and the summing of infinite series, and constitutes a major part of modern university education. Developed in the seventeenth century by two mathematicians, Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton, calculus builds on algebra, trigonometry, and analytic geometry and is indispensable to the solutions of problems arising from science and engineering.

Career Academy: Career academies are school-within-a-school programs (see the definition for small learning communities) operating within larger high schools. A career theme such as engineering or health care permeates the curriculum, class offerings, and other experiences at the career academy. Career academies offer academic coursework, usually taught by a core team of teachers, to develop close teacher-student connections and promote cross-disciplinary teaching and learning opportunities. They also offer work experience through partnerships with local employers.

Career and Technical Education (CTE): Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are implemented by a school or district to allow all students multiple pathways (see definition below) toward careers and higher education.

The multiple pathways approach to career and technical education involves more than just tacking on career and technical courses to an existing academic curriculum. It typically includes an effort to improve instruction in core academic courses as well as career and technical courses, and demonstrating the relevance of the academic courses to students. This allows students to be prepared for careers, but also better prepared for college than they might be under traditional high school programs.

Carnegie Units: Carnegie Units are used to measure the amount of time spent on a subject, not the results attained. One Carnegie Unit equals 120 hours of class time with an instructor over the course of a year at the high school level. This earns the student one "unit" of high school credit. Fourteen units are deemed to constitute the minimum amount of preparation that may be interpreted as four years of high school preparation. A semester (one-half of a full year) earns half a Carnegie Unit.

Charter Management Organizations (CMOs): Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) are organizations that contract with a district to deliver management services for a school. These services typically include curriculum development, assessment design, professional development, systems implementation, back-office services, teacher recruitment, and facility services. CMOs are designed to enable and accelerate charter growth by centralizing or sharing certain functions and resources across multiple charter schools.

Charter Schools: Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have been released from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school's charter.

Cloze Passage: A cloze passage is a reading comprehension exercise in which words have been omitted in a systematic fashion. Students fill in the blanks, and their responses are counted correct if they are exact matches for the missing words.

Coaching: A professional development process of supporting teachers in implementing new classroom practices by providing new content and information, modeling related teaching strategies, and offering ongoing feedback as teachers master new practices. (See also Mentoring.)

Cognitive Development: The development of knowledge and skills that allows children to understand and think about the world around them, including the development of reasoning skills.

Cognitive Load: The demand on working memory during thinking and problem solving.

Cognitive Science: The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as the study of the processes that underlie learning and cognition (the process of knowing). It is a foundational component of scientifically informed educational practice. The two main classes of cognitive mechanism that control learning are information processing operations and mental representations (NMP Task Group Reports, Chapter 4-xi). The cognitive processes of: 1) information processing operations includes attention, working memory, retrieval, transfer, and retention; and 2) mental representations includes declarative, procedural, and conceptual knowledge; verbatim and gist memories (NMP Report, Chapter 4-2).

Coherent Curriculum: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to mean a curriculum marked by effective, logical progressions from earlier, less sophisticated topics into later, more sophisticated ones (NMP Final Report, p. xvii). (See also Focused Curriculum.)

Cohort Rate: The cohort dropout rate measures what happens to a group of students over a period of time. This rate is based on repeated measures of a group (or cohort) of students with shared experiences, and reveals how many students starting in a specific grade drop out over time. For example, the cohort dropout rate of the class of 2000 in Thomas Jefferson High School is 10%, meaning that 10% of students who enrolled in Thomas Jefferson High School in the year 1996 dropped out. Typically, cohort rates from longitudinal studies provide more background and contextual data on the students who drop out.

College Liaison: A person who is the contact point for students who are attending college courses. This person discusses everything students need to know about registering, dropping, withdrawing, etc. from college classes.

Common Application: An application form developed and widely accepted by participating colleges and universities.

Common Assessments: Common assessments are those assessments administered in a routine, consistent manner across a state, district, or school. Under this definition, common assessments include annual statewide accountability tests and commercially produced tests, interim assessments, benchmark assessments, and end-of-course tests, as long as they are administered consistently and routinely to provide information that can be compared across classrooms and schools.

Community College: A two-year public institution providing higher education and lower-level tertiary education, granting certificates, diplomas, and associate's degrees. After graduating from a community college, some students transfer to a four-year university.

Commutative Property: For school mathematics, this is the property that two numbers can be added or multiplied in either order and the result does not change (e.g., 3 + 7 = 7 + 3, 2.4 x 7.23 = 7.23 x 2.4). (See also Associative Property and Distributive Property.)

Compound Word: A combination of two or more words that function as a single unit of meaning (e.g., the words side and walk can be combined to make the word sidewalk).

Comprehension Strategies: Techniques to teach reading comprehension, including summarization, prediction, and inferring word meanings from context.

Comprehension Strategy Instruction: The explicit teaching of techniques that are particularly effective for comprehending text. Explicit instruction includes direct explanation, teacher modeling ("thinkaloud"), guided practice, and opportunities for independent practice.

Comprehensive Factors: Comprehensive factors are those that account for a high percentage of total dropouts such as a schoolwide high absentee rate or low credit accumulation. If a large number of students in a school have poor attendance, this factor may account for a high percentage of the school's dropouts. Schools can implement strategies to change comprehensive factors but also need to consider predictive factors in planning dropout prevention and recovery programs.

Comprehensive School Reform: Comprehensive school reform (CSR) is a systemic approach to school improvement that addresses every aspect of a school, from curriculum to scheduling to management to family and community involvement. Rather than use individual, piecemeal programs, effective CSR integrates research-based practices into one unified program to raise student achievement.

Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI): The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to drill and practice programs, tutorials, or their combination that make use of computer technology (NMP Report, Chapter 6-110). (See also Computer-Based Instruction, Drill and Practice Software, and Tutorials.)

Computer-Based Instruction (CBI): The National Mathematics Panel used this general term to refer to the various applications of computer technology to education. Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is one such example. (NMP Report, Chapter 6-109). (See also Computer-Assisted Instruction, Drill and Practice Software, and Tutorials.).

Conceptual Knowledge: The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as general knowledge and understanding stored in long-term memory (e.g., understanding the base-10 system) (NMP Report, Chapter 4-7). (See also Declarative Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge.)

Concurrent Validity: Concurrent validity is the correlation between the assessment that is being investigated and a similar assessment when the assessments are completed at the same point in time. Correlation coefficients range from -1 to 1. A correlation coefficient close to 1 indicates a strong overlap between the assessments.

Consonant: A speech sound made by the following letters or blend of letters in English: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, z, sometimes y. See hard c, g, soft c, g.

Constructing Meaning: A process of making sense of text. By connecting one's own knowledge with the print, readers "build" an understanding of what the text is about.

Context Clues: Sources of information outside of words that readers may use to predict the identities and meanings of unknown words. Context clues may be drawn from the immediate sentence containing the word, from text already read, from pictures accompanying the text, or from definitions, restatements, examples, or descriptions in the text.

Continuous Improvement Cycle: A continuous improvement cycle provides the opportunity for ongoing identification of effective practices and/or actions that should be continued and ineffective practices and/or actions that should be revised or eliminated. The cycle begins with setting standards and defining outcomes and then proceeds to an iterative process of gathering evidence about progress, analyzing this evidence, and making plans for improvement as well as implementing those plans. The process then begins anew with another assessment of progress. This process has also been called the cycle of improvement.

Cooperative Education (Co-op) Program: A program that integrates classroom study and work experience. By offering academic credit and salary, it helps students make a smoother transition from school to work.

Core Curriculum: The core curriculum is the course of study regarded as critical and usually made mandatory for all students of a school or school system. Core curricula are often instituted at the elementary and secondary levels by local school boards, departments of education, or other administrative agencies charged with overseeing education.

Core Instruction: Instruction provided to all students in the class, usually guided by a comprehensive core reading program. Part of the core instruction is usually provided to the class as a whole, and part is provided during the small group, differentiated instruction period. Although instruction is differentiated by student need during the small group period, materials and lesson procedures from the core program can frequently be used to provide reteaching, or additional teaching to students according to their needs.

Corrective Feedback: Feedback that occurs as soon as an error is made and provides scaffolded instruction to show the correct answer to the learner.

Correlational Studies: Correlational studies look for relationships among variables. Although correlational studies can suggest that a relationship between two variables exists, they do not support an inference that one variable causes a change in another.

CRA: Concrete-Representation-Abstract: A learning sequence for mathematical topics that are new or difficult in which students follow problem-solving steps systematically, beginning with concrete materials, progressing to visual representation, and finally to abstract numbers.

Credit Recovery: Credit recovery is defined as a way to earn credit (i.e., Carnegie Units) for a course in which a student was previously unsuccessful in earning academic credit towards graduation. Credit recovery differs from programs that allow students to earn "first time credit" in that students, having already satisfied class time requirements for a course in which they were unsuccessful, can focus on earning credit based on demonstrating competency in the content knowledge and skills for the particular course. Credit recovery programs have a primary focus of helping students stay in school and graduate on time and are usually offered during the summer, through extended day schedules, and, more recently, through virtual courses.

Criterion-Related Validity: In educational assessment, criterion-related validity means that student scores on an assessment should correspond to their scores or performance on other indicators of competence, such as teacher ratings, course grades, or standardized test scores.

Critical Foundations of Algebra: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to the key skills necessary for the learning of algebra. Three clusters of concepts and skills were identified that are the most essential mathematics for students to learn thoroughly prior to algebra course work—fluency with whole numbers, fluency with fractions, and particular aspects of geometry and measurement (NMP Report, Chapter 3-42). (See also Benchmarks for the Critical Foundations.)

Cross-Curricular Enrichment Activities: Activities aimed to enhance children's knowledge, creativity, and skills. Enrichment activities may include crafts, sports, theater, music and games, and projects aimed to build skills in critical thinking, listening, memory, visualization, and concentration.

CROWD: An acronym intended to help teachers remember the following types of interactive prompts/questions used during dialogic reading: Completion, Recall, Open-ended, Wh-, Distancing.

Culture of Inquiry: A culture of inquiry is a type of data-based decision-making in which faculty create an organizational custom focused on using data and other evidence to formulate questions about and shape instructional practices.

Curriculum-Embedded Assessment: An assessment that occurs during a classroom lesson or other type of instructional activity. It is sometimes called a unit test, mastery test, or daily probe. Embedded assessments can be used as a quick and efficient way to collect student data on the spot.

Cut-Point (or Cutoff Score): A set score that is used to determine the minimum level needed to pass an assessment.

Cycle of Inquiry: The cycle of inquiry is a process in which educators analyze data, such as demographic, perceptual, school process, and student achievement data, in order to understand how these elements are interrelated and what they suggest about students' learning needs. As a multistep process, the cycle of inquiry often involves analyzing data to better understand student needs, developing hypotheses about instructional practice, formulating and implementing action plans to improve student learning and achievement, and then analyzing data again to evaluate student progress and inform next steps.

Data: Data are empirical information that educators can draw upon to make a variety of instructional and organizational decisions. By themselves, data are not evidence. It takes concepts, theories, and interpretive frames of references to make sense of data. Education-related data may be student-focused (e.g., demographics, attendance and behavior, performance on standardized tests) or administrative (e.g., financial and staffing information) in nature but are not limited to these types. State and local education agencies, districts, schools, or teachers typically maintain data. (See also Data Warehouse.)

Data Culture: The data culture is a learning environment within a school or district that includes attitudes, values, goals, norms of behavior, and practices, accompanied by an explicit vision for data use by leadership. The data culture characterizes a group's appreciation for the importance and power that data can bring to the decision-making process. It also includes the recognition that data are a necessary part of an educator's responsibilities and that the use of data to influence and inform practice is an essential tool that will be used frequently.

Data Disaggregation: Data disaggregation means that data such as test results are sorted into groups of students. Common groupings are students who are economically disadvantaged, from racial and ethnic minority groups, have disabilities, or have limited English fluency. This practice allows parents or staff to see more than just the average score for a large group of students. Instead, parents or staff are able to see how each student or each student group is performing.

Data Elements/Data Indicators: The variables that make up a data system or data warehouse.

Data Facilitator: A data facilitator is an individual charged with helping schools or districts use data effectively to make decisions. Often, data facilitators organize school-based data teams, lead practitioners in a collaborative inquiry process, help interpret data, or educate staff on using data to improve instructional practices and student achievement.

Data Literacy: Data literacy is the ability to ask and answer questions about collecting, analyzing, and making sense of data. Widespread data literacy among teachers, administrators, and students is a salient characteristic of a data-driven school culture.

Data Management: Data management is the development and execution of policies, practices, and procedures in order to control the information lifecycle needs of an organization in an effective manner.

Data Quality: Data quality refers to the reliability and validity of collected data.

Data Teams: Data teams are school groups and/or district staff who come together to analyze data and help one another use data effectively. Data teams often include district administrators, principals, instructional leader(s), several teachers, and information technology (IT) staff. These teams may lead administrators and school staff in using achievement data to identify and respond to students' learning needs through instructional modifications.

Data Tools: Data tools are software that allows teachers and administrators to collect, organize, and analyze data for use in decision making. This software can be on individual personal computers or online tools. User-friendly software allows users to easily access, manipulate, and analyze data to improve classroom practice.

Data Use: Data use involves systematically collecting, analyzing, and interpreting various types of data to guide educational decisions at the state, district, school, and classroom level for improved student achievement. Data use is a practice that brings meaning, information, and knowledge out of data that informs educational practice.

Data Warehouse: A data warehouse is a computer system or systems that stores educational information from several sources and integrates it into a single electronic source or smaller electronic sources. Data warehouses are designed to allow the manipulation, updating, and control of multiple databases that are connected to one another via individual student identification numbers. Capabilities of data warehouses often extend beyond data storage, however, and may include data management and reporting systems used for retrieving and analyzing data.

Data-Based Decision Making: Data-based decision making in education refers to teachers, principals, and administrators systematically collecting and analyzing various types of data, including demographic, administrative, process, perceptual, and achievement data, to guide a range of decisions to help improve the success of students and schools. Other common terms include data-driven decision making, data-informed decision making, and evidence-based decision making.

Data-Based Differentiation: Data-based differentiation refers to the ongoing analysis of student performance data to differentiate instruction to meet the changing needs of students.

Data-Informed District: A data-informed district is one where effective, sensible uses of data inform educational practice throughout. A data-informed district has a clear understanding regarding how and why educational practices will be implemented, what is meant by learning, and how data will be used to understand and support these.

Deadlines: A specified date by which applicants should submit admission, scholarship, and financial aid forms. Scholarship deadlines may be earlier than admission deadlines in the same school; state financial aid deadlines may vary from federal deadlines.

Declarative Knowledge: The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as explicit memory for specific events and information (e.g., memory for addition facts) (NMP Report, Chapter 4-7). (See also Conceptual Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge.)

Decoding: The ability to translate a word from print to speech, usually by employing knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences. It is also the act of deciphering a new word by sounding it out.

Deduction: Starting with general assumptions or principles and asking what follows from these premises. Starting with a generalization and deriving relevant examples.

Deep Processing: A mode of thinking about material in which one pays attention to the meaning and implications of the material.

Deferred Admission: An accepted student can delay college entrance by a year (or a semester).

Degrees of Reading Power: An assessment that measures how well a student understands the meaning of text. Test results are reported on a readability scale, allowing teachers to link students' comprehension levels with text at the appropriate degree of difficulty.

Delayed-Judgment-of-Learning Task: A study strategy where students evaluate how well they have learned a set of concepts after a meaningful delay. An effective technique for helping students more accurately assess what they know and don't know.

Derived Fact Strategies: In mathematics, derived fact strategies are strategies in which children use facts they already know to find related facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Developmental Continuum: A predictable progression of skills from simple to complex that can be used to guide systematic planning, differentiated instruction, and progress monitoring of children's learning.

Diagnostic Assessment: An assessment that can help determine why a learning problem is occurring and which skills or performance deficits need to be addressed to improve performance.

Dialogic Reading: The goal of this instructional practice is to have the adult and the child switch roles so that the child learns to become the storyteller with the assistance of the adult, who functions as an active listener and questioner. During story reading, the teacher/adult engages the child in conversation by systematically asking questions, adding information, and prompting the student to increase the sophistication of responses by expanding on his or her utterances.

Differentiated Instruction: A broad term used in education to mean matching instruction to meet the different needs of learners in a given classroom.

Direct Vocabulary Learning: Explicit instruction in both the meanings of individual words and word-learning strategies. Direct vocabulary instruction aids reading comprehension.

Direct Word Meaning Instruction: Explicit instruction that includes helping students look up definitions in dictionaries and glossaries, read the words and their definitions, match words and their definitions, participate in oral recitation, memorize definitions, and use graphic displays of the relationships among words and concepts such as semantic maps.

Distributed Leadership: Distributed leadership articulates how leadership works and tasks are shared and supported by individuals and structures across an organization. The social distribution of leadership reflects how work is shared, assigned, or taken up by formal or informal leaders. The situational distribution of leadership explains how organizational structures such as policies, programs, and other materials shape the context in which work is completed.

Distributed Practice: Learning that is divided up into sessions, leaving gaps between practice sessions. Typically results in better recall of material than learning that is presented in a single block of instruction.

Distributive Property: In school mathematics, this property refers to the fact that when we multiply a number by a sum of two numbers, the same result is obtained by computing this multiplication in two different ways: the first is to add the two numbers and then multiply the first number, and the second is to multiply the first number with each of the two numbers being added and then add the resulting products. For example, 14 x (2 + 37) = (14 x 2) + (14 x 37). (See also Associative Property and Commutative Property.)

Do Now: A Do Now is a warm-up question that a teacher gives to the class to complete in the first five minutes of class. It is used to help students immediately focus and settle down to work in class.

Dosage: In education, dosage refers to the frequency and duration of instruction. In Response to Intervention (RtI), "double dosage" refers to breaking a lesson into two sessions, with the teacher introducing skills during the first session and then reteaching them with added practice during the second session.

Double-Entry Journals: Also called two-column notes. With this strategy, students write two kinds of notes in two columns or on facing pages. On the left are the key ideas in the reading selection, with the page on which they occur, either directly quoted or paraphrased; on the right are students' thoughts about those ideas. Double-entry journals can be completed on paper or using a word processor.

Drill and Practice Software: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to software that provides practice on skills and knowledge to help students remember and use that which they have been taught (NMP Report, Chapter 6-110). (See also Computer-Assisted Instruction, Computer-Based Instruction, and Tutorials.)

Dropout: A dropout is a student who voluntarily withdraws from or stops attending high school after having reached the legal age to do so.

Dropout Rates: High school dropout rates can generally be defined as the percentage of students who leave school without graduating four, five, or six years after entering high school. Middle school dropout rates are defined similarly. There are many more specific ways of calculating dropout rates as defined below.

Dual-Enrollment Courses: Dual-enrollment courses allow students to earn college credit while still in high school. Students enrolled in high schools may be dual-enrolled at a local institution of higher learning, such as a community college or university. Some dual-enrollment courses may result in college credit, but only if the participating student has already satisfied certain requirements for a high school diploma. Dual enrollment provides students with greater access to a wide range of rigorous academic and technical courses.

Early Action: Permits students to apply to a college or university of their choice and receive a decision early in their senior year, well in advance of the normal spring response dates. Though students will hear early regarding their admission, they are not committed to attend and may continue to apply to other colleges. If students are applying for financial aid, they will need to follow the aid application deadlines set by each institution. Students are not required to make a commitment before May 1, but are encouraged to do so as soon as a final choice is made.

Early College High School: Early college high schools are small schools designed so that students can earn both a high school diploma and an Associate's degree or up to two years of credit toward a Bachelor's degree.

Early Decision: Requires students to commit to a college or university at the time of application that, if admitted, will require them to enroll. Students should apply under an Early Decision plan only if they know that they can make a well reasoned, first choice decision. Upon admission, the institution will require a nonrefundable deposit well before May 1. Students may apply to other colleges but are permitted to have only one request for financial aid at or near the time admissions is offered. If admitted, students must enroll, unless the financial aid award is inadequate.

Early Literacy (also referred to as Emergent Literacy): The skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are developmental precursors to conventional forms of reading and writing; the concept that literacy learning begins at birth and is encouraged through participation with adults in meaningful reading and writing activities.

Early Reading First (ERF): A federal program to provide funds to school districts and other public or private organizations that serve children from low-income families. The program supports the development of early childhood centers of excellence that focus on all areas of development, especially on the early language, cognitive, and pre-reading skills that prepare children for continued school success and that serve primarily children from low-income families.

Early Reading Skills: The term is often used to describe the skills that are learned in preschool and that precede formal reading instruction. These include phonological awareness, letter recognition, print awareness, interest in engaging with stories and books, and vocabulary development.

Education Management Organization (EMO): An EMO, or Education Management Organization, is a for-profit firm that manages a school receiving public funds, including a conventional district public school or a publicly-funded charter school.

Efficiency: In education, efficiency refers to how quickly an assessment can be administered, scored, and analyzed for all the students tested.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA): The reauthorization of ESEA in 2001 by the No Child Left Behind Act mandated several changes, including: increased accountability; greater choice for parents and students, particularly those attending schools in need of improvement; more flexibility for states and districts in using federal education dollars; and stronger emphasis on academic achievement, especially in reading and math.

Elision: In phonological awareness, the ability to isolate and drop a syllable or phoneme from a word. Example: Say "heat" with the /t/. (See also Phoneme Deletion.)

Engineering: The customization of scientific and mathematical principles for practical goals such as commerce or industry. Engineers' work includes the design, construction, and testing of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems. There is a wide range of engineering disciplines including mechanical, civil, electrical, chemical, industrial, software, aerospace, computer, ocean, biomedical, agricultural, and textile engineering.

Enrichment Activities: Interactive activities that expand on students' learning in ways that differ from the methods used during the school day. They enhance a student's education and cultural awareness, by exposure to new concepts and unique uses of old concepts.

Environmental Print: Print that is a part of everyday life and for a specific purpose, such as signs, billboards, labels, lists, messages, and business logos.

Evaluation: The assessment of the effectiveness of a program in achieving its objectives.

Event Rate: The event dropout rate estimates the percentage of high school students who left high school between the beginning of one school year and the beginning of the next without earning a high school diploma or its equivalent (e.g., a GED). For example, the event dropout rate at Thomas Jefferson High School in the 1999-2000 school year was 8%, meaning that 8% of all the students in grades 9-12 at Thomas Jefferson High School dropped out between fall of 1999 and spring of 2000. This dropout rate offers an annual measure of recent dropout occurrences. Event dropout rates can provide important information about how effective educators are in keeping students enrolled in school in a specific year.

Exit Ticket: An exercise or question that students complete in order to be dismissed from class.

Expected Family Contribution (EFC): The total amount the federal government expects students and their families to pay toward college costs from their income and assets.

Explicit Instruction: A teaching approach that involves direct explanation using language that is concise, specific, and related to the objective; the actions of the teacher are clear, unambiguous, direct, and visible and make clear what the students are to do and learn.

Expository Text: Non-fiction, or informational, text that uses facts, examples, and opinions to inform, explain, or persuade.

Expressive Language: The use and knowledge of words in spoken language. (See also Language Development and Receptive Language.)

Extrinsic Motivation: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to learning motivated by gaining an external reward, such as the approval of parents and others, or the respect of peers (NMP Report, Chapter 4-12). (See also Intrinsic Motivation.)

Fact Retrieval: In general terms, this refers to the recall of facts. In the context of elementary school mathematics, direct retrieval typically refers to the recall of a basic arithmetic fact from long-term memory, without the need to resort to a procedure (e.g., counting) to reconstruct the answer. Direct retrieval does not necessarily indicate effortlessness or automaticity of recall. The latter occurs when the fact is retrieved quickly, accurately, and without the need to engage working memory; direct retrieval can be effortful, especially in the early stages of learning. The achievement of automaticity does not emerge without extensive experience at recalling the fact (NMP Report, Chapter 4-26).

Fade-Out Dropout: Fade-out dropouts are students who are officially still at school but are in the process of slowly disengaging with the eventual result of dropping out. These students are usually characterized as skipping class and "acting out" in class and not being involved in most formal aspects of school. These students eventually stop attending school without formally withdrawing from the enrollment roster.

Fading: Gradual reduction in the information presented to a child to support performance, so that the child moves toward independent performance.

False Positives and False Negatives: These are technical terms used to describe the misidentification of students. The numbers of false positives and false negatives are related to sensitivity and specificity. Sensitivity is equal to the number of true positives (students properly identified as needing help in mathematics) divided by the sum of this value and the number of false negatives, while specificity is equal to the number of true negatives divided by the sum of this value and the number of false positives (students misidentified during screening).

Federal Work Study Program: An award of on-campus part-time employment for students who demonstrate financial need. The maximum amount a student can earn under this program is determined by financial need.

Fee Waiver: Permits eligible students to submit college applications or test registration forms without the fee. A limited number are available through school counselors and educational agencies for students who qualify.

Financial Aid Package/Award: A combination of grants/scholarships, loans, and work-study that the college is able to offer students to meet their financial need.

Fluency: The ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with proper expression and comprehension. Because fluent readers do not have to concentrate on decoding words, they can focus their attention on what the text means.

Fluency with an Algorithm: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to mean the ability to carry out the algorithm by automatic recall (NMP Report, Chapter 3-xii).

Focused Curriculum: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to mean a curriculum that includes (and engages with adequate depth) the most important topics underlying success in school algebra (NMP Final Report, p. xvii). (See also Coherent Curriculum.)

Formal Assessment: The process of gathering information using standardized, published tests or instruments in conjunction with specific administration and interpretation procedures, and is used to make general instructional decisions.

Formative Assessment: Formative assessment entails gathering information about student learning during the progression of a course or program to improve the learning of those students. Formative assessments are designed to provide teachers and students with useful feedback so that future instruction and activities can better target student strengths and weaknesses. Feedback from this type of assessment is used to adapt the teaching to meet the learner's needs.

Foundational Reading Skills: Critical core skills that students need to become proficient in reading before they enter the upper elementary grades. Foundational reading skills include phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary.

Foundations of Arithmetic: Critical core skills that students need to become proficient in mathematics. Foundational skills include whole numbers in kindergarten through grade 5 and rational numbers in grades 4 through 8. Other foundational skills include solving word problems and building fluent retrieval of basic arithmetic facts.

Four-Year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate: The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate is defined as the number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who entered high school four years earlier (adjusting for transfers in and out, émigrés, and deceased students). Students who graduate in four years include students who earn a regular high school diploma at the end of their fourth year, before the end of their fourth year, and, if the state so chooses, during a summer session immediately following their fourth year. It does not include students who graduate with a modified diploma or certificate of attendance or through a General Educational Development (GED) program.

Fractions: The National Mathematics Panel defines this term mathematically to mean certain points on the number line that are constructed in the following way based on the concept of a part-whole relationship. Start with the unit segment [0,1] (the segment from 0 to 1) serving as the whole; we are going to define all fractions with denominator equal to 3, for example. Divide [0,1] into 3 parts of equal length (equal parts). Then there are two division points in [0,1]; the one next to 0, which is symbolic of a third of the whole, is denoted by 1/3, by definition. Then the other multiples of 1/3 are denoted successively by 2/3, 3/3 (which is 1), 4/3, 5/3, etc. These multiples of 1/3 are then the fractions with denominator equal to 1/3. If the number 3 is replaced by 4, then we get 1/4 as the division point next to 0 after [0,1] has been divided into 4 parts of equal length, and the multiples of 1/4 are then all the fractions with denominator equal to 4. And so on. In general, if m and n are whole numbers and n > 0, then m/n is the m-th multiple of 1/n (NMP Report, Chapter 4-40).

Frayer Model: An adaptation of the concept map. The framework of the Frayer Model includes: the concept word, the definition, characteristics of the concept word, examples of the concept word, and non-examples of the concept word. It is important to include both examples and non-examples so students are able to identify what the concept word is and what the concept word is not.

Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA): The primary form used to determine students' eligibility for financial aid. It should be filled out by early March of a student's senior year.

General Educational Development (GED) Certificate: General Educational Development (or GED) tests are a group of five tests that, when passed, certifies that the test-taker has high school-level academic skills. To pass the GED tests and earn a GED certificate, test-takers must score higher than 40% of graduating high school seniors nationwide. Only individuals who have not earned a high school diploma may take the GED tests. Most school districts offer GED preparation courses to help students successfully pass the GED tests.

General Outcome Measure: A measure of specific proficiencies within a broader academic domain. These proficiencies are related to broader outcomes. For example, a measure of oral reading fluency serves as a general outcome measure of performance in the area of reading. These measures can be used to monitor student progress over time.

Generating Questions: Generating questions involves teaching students to ask their own questions. This strategy improves students' active processing of text and comprehension. For example, a student might be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.

Geometry: As defined by the National Mathematics Panel, geometry is the branch of mathematics concerned with the analytic study of spatial information, including the properties of figures in space (NMP Report, Chapter 4-66).

Gist Memory: A term generally used to refer to major relations among the pieces of information, including various numerical approximations such as more, less, or between. The National Mathematics Panel identified two main types of memory, namely verbatim memory and gist memory. Gist memory is the form of memory that is typically relied on in reasoning. A combination of gist knowledge and verbatim knowledge is critical for success in math. The importance of this distinction can be illustrated by a study of children's memory for numerical information within stories. The verbatim level consisted of the actual numbers within the stories; the gist level consisted of various numerical relations, such as "more," "less," "most," "least," and "between" (NMP Report, Chapter 4-xii, 4-9). (See also Verbatim Memory.)

Grade Point Average (G.P.A.): A system used to evaluate academic performance. The most frequently used system of numerical values for grades is A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0. The G.P.A. is reached by multiplying the number of credits given for a course by the grade received in the course. May be weighted or unweighted.

Grade Retention: Grade retention, or grade repetition, is the process of having a student repeat a grade, usually because of poor academic performance in that grade that results in a lack of adequate course credits for promotion.

Grade-Level Teams: The grade-level teams are teams of classroom teachers who teach within a grade range and meet regularly with the purpose of improving student learning outcomes. The teachers work together to participate in professional development, examine student data, and plan instruction that is coherent across the grade level.

Graduation Rates: Graduation rates are defined as the percentage of students who graduate within four, five, or six years of entering high school. There are several ways to calculate graduation rates such as the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate, the Status Completion Rate, or the Four-Year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate.

Graphic and Semantic Organizers: Graphic and semantic organizers summarize and illustrate concepts and interrelationships among concepts in a text, using diagrams or other pictorial devices. Graphic organizers are often known as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters. Semantic organizers are graphic organizers that look somewhat like a spider web where lines connect a central concept to a variety of related ideas and events.

Guided Practice: Guided practice refers to the teacher posing questions that will gradually lead students from easy or familiar examples to new understandings.

High School Graduation Credit Requirements: In order to graduate from high school, students must complete specified state and local graduation credit requirements. Graduation credit requirements may vary among states and school districts but they usually specify that students complete a minimum set of credits in required courses.

Higher-Order Questions: Questions that require more advanced understanding than simple recall, such as questions that require students to interpret, compare, explain, analyze, or evaluate.

Hypothesis: A hypothesis is a temporary assumption made in order to test its logical or practical consequences. Within the cycle of inquiry, it is an evidence-based assumption about students' learning needs that teachers can test using instructional modifications and follow-up data about student performance.

Illusion of Knowing: The common misperception that you have mastered material when in fact there are gaps in your understanding.

Implicit Instruction: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to teaching approaches that provide students with broad guidance in terms of general procedures for solving problems, including relatively broad questions to ask themselves, but little in the way of specific guidance in how students construct knowledge; they may not even include any mathematics in them (NMP Report, Chapter 6-72). (See also Explicit Instruction.)

Increased Learning Time: "Increased learning time" means using a longer school day, week, or year schedule to significantly increase the total number of school hours to include additional time for (a) instruction in core academic subjects including English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography; (b) instruction in other subjects and enrichment activities that contribute to a well-rounded education, including, for example, physical education, service learning, and experiential and work-based learning opportunities that are provided by partnering, as appropriate, with other organizations; and (c) teachers to collaborate, plan, and engage in professional development within and across grades and subjects.

Indicators: Indicators are measurements or statistics that reflect important aspects of a data system. Indicators must tell a great deal about the entire system by reporting the condition of a few particularly significant features of it.

Individualized Education Plan (IEP): An Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and is a written document that is developed for each public school child who is eligible for special education. An IEP outlines individual learning goals and the steps that are taken to achieve the goals that closely align with the needs of the student.

Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004: IDEA was originally passed in 1975, with the latest reauthorization in 2004. It is a federal statute related to providing a free, appropriate, public education and early intervening services to students with disabilities ages birth through 21. IDEA encourages schools to use multi-tiered intervention systems such as Response to Intervention (RtI).

Induction: Using information from specific facts or ideas to construct general principles.

Informal Assessment: A common term used in education to refer to assessment that does not follow prescribed rules for administration and scoring and has not necessarily undergone technical scrutiny for reliability and validity (e.g., classroom observations and probes of students' understandings used while they solve problems). (See also Assessment, Formative Assessment, and Summative Assessment.)

Instructional Leadership: Instructional leadership is leadership within a school or district that develops, guides, and assists classroom teachers in delivering high-quality instruction and that monitors the delivery of instruction for continuous improvement. Usually, the principal or grade-level or subject team leader are considered the instructional leader.

Intensity: Focused instruction where students are academically engaged with the content and the teacher and receive more opportunities to practice with immediate teacher feedback.

Intensive Intervention: Intensive academic and/or behavioral interventions are characterized by their increased focus for students who fail to respond to less intensive forms of instruction. Intensity can be increased through many dimensions including length, frequency, and duration of implementation. Within Response to Intervention (RtI), intensive instruction is sometimes referred to as tertiary intervention.

Interactive Reading: An adult reading a book to a child or a small group of children using a variety of techniques to engage the children in the text.

Interactive Whiteboard: A product that displays a computer desktop. It allows the teacher or presenter to access and display information from the Internet, run live video from a camera, deliver CD-ROM presentations, and control software from a single location.

Interim Assessments: Interim assessments are typically administered on a school- or districtwide scale at regular intervals during a single school year. Although the results from interim assessments may be used at the teacher or student level, the assessment is typically designed to be aggregated at a level beyond the classroom, such as to the school or district level. Interim assessments may be used in both formative and summative ways.

International Baccalaureate (IB): The IB is a nonprofit educational foundation that offers three programs for students aged 3 to 19. The rigorous IB courses aim to help develop the intellectual and socio-emotional skills to live, learn, and work in a rapidly globalizing world. The IB Diploma program for high school students provides schools with a curriculum that is universally acceptable to all institutions of higher learning throughout the world.

Internship: An intern is a person who works at a company or organization with an emphasis on on-the-job training rather than merely employment. Interns are usually college or high school students but can be postgraduate adults seeking skills for a new career. An internship may be either paid, unpaid, or partially paid (in the form of a stipend).

Student internships provide opportunities for students to gain experience in their field, determine if they have an interest in a particular career, create a network of contacts, or gain school credit. Internships provide the employers with low cost or free labor and also the prospect of interns returning to the company after completing their education who need little or no training.

Interoperability: From a technology systems standpoint, interoperability refers to the capacity of a system to communicate and exchange data seamlessly with other systems, defined by a standard format for shared data, a set of naming conventions, and a set of rules for interaction among applications.

Intervention Program: These programs are used to provide targeted, intensive intervention for small groups of struggling students. They provide content for instruction that is intended for flexible use as part of differentiated instruction and/or more intensive instruction to meet student learning needs.

Interventionist: In Response to Intervention (RtI), the interventionist is the person teaching the instructional intervention. The interventionist might be a classroom teacher, instructional assistant, or other certified school personnel.

Intrinsic Motivation: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to mean the desire to learn for no reason other than the sheer enjoyment, challenge, pleasure, or interest of the activity (i.e., the desire to learn for its own sake) (NMP Report, Chapter 4-12). (See also Extrinsic Motivation.)

Job Shadow: A program for high school students to find out what it is like to be in a specific profession, in order to help them choose the college program, and subsequently the profession, that they would like to choose. It requires an employee/company to partner with the school.

K-W-L: A technique used most frequently with expository text to promote comprehension. It can be used as a type of graphic organizer in the form of a chart, and it consists of a 3-step process: What I Know (accessing prior knowledge), What I Want to Know (setting a purpose for reading), and What I Learned (recalling what has been read).

Knowledge Management: Knowledge management is defined as the documentation of the culmination of practices, behaviors, and structures that enable organizations to know and to share their knowledge. Knowledge management also involves the ability to get the information to the people that need it at the right time for the purpose needed.

Language Development: The development of knowledge and skills that allows children to understand, speak, and use words to communicate. (See also Expressive Language and Receptive Language.)

Late-Leavers: Students who have adequate skills, have accrued credits, and are older and more mature but choose to leave high school usually for reasons unrelated to school.

Leading Data: Leading data are types of formative achievement or instructional data used to inform proactive decision making, such as district benchmark tests or periodic tests used to check for understanding. Leading data help inform immediate instructional decisions such as what concepts might need to be retaught in a class.

Learning Center: A preschool classroom area that contains materials, such as blocks, dramatic play materials, or art supplies, where children can explore their own interests at their own pace.

Letter Knowledge: The ability to identify letters of the alphabet. (See also Alphabetic Knowledge.)

Letter Recognition: The ability to name a letter that is displayed or find a letter in a group.

Letter-Sound Correspondence: The matching of an oral sound to its corresponding letter or group of letters. (See also Sound-Symbol Association.)

Life Event Dropout: Life event dropouts are students who drop out of high school because of a life event such as pregnancy, an extended family emergency, needing to work to support the family, or being incarcerated in a juvenile or adult facility.

Listening Comprehension: The ability to understand and gain meaning from speech, what has been heard.

Literacy: Reading, writing, and the creative and analytical acts involved in producing and comprehending texts.

Literacy Coach (also referred to as Reading Coach): A literacy or reading specialist who focuses on providing professional development for teachers by providing them with the additional support needed to implement various instructional programs and practices. (See also Mentor.)

Literature Circles: Literature Circles are small student-led group discussions in which each group member has a specific role and has prepared for the discussion according to that role.

Long-Term Memory: A term generally used to refer to information stored in the brain and retrievable over a long period of time. The commitment of procedures, rules, and often-used facts to long-term memory will reduce the working memory demands associated with solving a problem, thus freeing resources for processing less familiar problem features.

Longitudinal Data: Longitudinal data refer to multiyear data in areas such as achievement, attendance, and behavior that are maintained for each student. The ideal type of longitudinal data to track dropout rates are student data with unique statewide identifiers for individual students and their teachers and would include all public, charter, and private schools to account for school or district transfers. These data follow students for a designated period of time such as from high school entry to graduation or dropout.

Longitudinal Data System: A longitudinal data system is one that holds and tracks multiple years of student and teacher demographic data, test scores and assessments, and other information.

Low-Performing Schools: A low-performing school is one that has not met state standards for achievement. One frequently used indicator is whether the school has been "identified for improvement" because it has not made adequate yearly progress (AYP) for two years consecutively.

Magnitude Comparison: In mathematics, the magnitude of a quantity or number is its size, so a magnitude comparison is a comparison of size. This term is generally used when considering size in an approximate sense.

Major Topics of School Algebra: The National Mathematics Panel developed these topics to cover all of school algebra traditionally extending over two courses, Algebra I and Algebra II. The major topics include: symbols and expressions; linear equations; quadratic equations, functions, algebra of polynomials; and combinatorics and finite probability. In teaching these topics, one should not consider them to be a sequence of disjointed items simply to be committed to memory but, rather, one should emphasize the connections as well as the logical progression among them. See the Overview of School Algebra on pp. 3-6 to 3-15 of NMP Report, Chapter 3. (See also Authentic Algebra Course and School Algebra.)

Massed Practice: Learning that takes place in a single block of instruction rather than being divided into sessions separated by gaps. Typically leads to inferior ability to recall material after a delay, compared to practice that is distributed, or spaced, over time.

Mastery Test: An assessment that measures whether a student has learned a specific skill or concept.

Mathematics Proficiency: Proficiency in mathematics has five components: 1) conceptual understanding
(comprehension of mathematical concepts, operations, and relations); 2) procedural fluency (skills in carrying out procedures flexibly, fluently, and appropriately); 3) strategic competence (ability to formulate, represent, and solve mathematical problems); 4) adaptive reasoning (capacity for logical thought, reflection, explanation, and justification); and 5) productive disposition (habitual inclination to see mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile, coupled with a belief in diligence and one's own efficacy) (NMP Final Report, p. 22).

Measurement: A commonly used term to refer to a method of determining quantity, capacity, or dimension.

Mental Model: A way of internally representing problems, often in the form of specific images. This internal representation can translate an abstract concept into a concrete representation.

Mentor: An experienced, often specially trained teacher who works with new teachers, interns, or regular teachers in a professional improvement program. Mentors serve as resources, coaches, advisors, and confidants to other teachers and may be involved in formative evaluation activities as well as in the development and implementation of the plan of assistance. (See also Literacy Coach.)

Mentoring: In mentoring, a more experienced person (mentor) helps a less experienced person (mentee) develop or improve a specified academic or social-emotional capacity. In many secondary schools, mentorship programs are offered to support students in program or course completion, confidence building, and transitioning to further education or the workforce. In the case of dropout prevention, the mentor is usually a counselor, teacher, or tutor and the mentee is the student who is at risk of dropping out. The mentor can advise the student in a variety of subjects such as specific courses, study skills, or coping skills.

Metacognition: Thinking about thinking. Taking conscious control of learning, monitoring the progress of learning, correcting errors, analyzing the effectiveness of learning strategies, and changing learning behaviors and strategies when necessary. For example, good readers use metacognition before reading when they clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text.

Metric: A metric is a unit in a system of measurement.

Misconception: An inaccurate understanding. Children often develop intuitive understandings of the world that do not match scientific theory, or they may misunderstand something they are being taught. Teachers need to look for and correct these errors.

Modeling: The demonstration of a strategy, skill, or concept that students will be learning.

Monitoring: The No Child Left Behind Act requires that states regularly review the performance of approved providers in improving the academic proficiency of participating students. States are required to withdraw approval from providers that fail for two years in a row to help raise academic achievement of students. States can also withdraw approval from providers that fail to meet other state eligibility requirements.

Motivational Strategies: Motivational strategies include praising students for their effort and for being engaged as they work through problems or challenges. In Response to Intervention (RtI), Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions should include components that promote student effort (engagement-contingent rewards), persistence (completion-contingent rewards), and achievement (performance-contingent rewards).

Multi-Tier Intervention (or Tiered Instruction): Multi-tier intervention refers to a prevention system that provides levels of instructional intensity to meet the needs of all students. In Response to Intervention (RtI), there are typically three tiers: Tier 1 is the universal core program that all students receive; Tier 2 supplements primary intervention (i.e., the universal core program) such that students receive additional research-based preventative treatment; and Tier 3 supplements Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions to intensify instruction.

Multiple Measures: The use of multiple measures involves accessing various assessments to characterize the performance of students, schools, and school districts. Measures for assessing student achievement can include student portfolios and exhibitions, performance assessments, teacher observations, and formal tests. School and district measures can include student growth measures, promotion rates, attendance records, suspension rates, graduation rates, enrollment in honor or advanced placement classes, and formal tests.

Multiple Pathways Model: Multiple pathways models are a type of curriculum that consist of three components: college preparatory academic core classes, a choice of professional or technical core classes that offer academic and real-world applications, and field-based learning, usually in a career interest area identified by the student. This type of curriculum allows students to learn and apply essential academic concepts and skills for a functional purpose. Students are guided in discovering the value of academic concepts in future work-related endeavors. At the same time, all students also are exposed to career-based opportunities as part of their daily school experience.

The multiple pathways approach to career and technical education involves more than just tacking on career and technical courses to an existing academic curriculum. It typically includes an effort to improve instruction in core academic courses as well as career and technical courses, aligning material and academic strands, and demonstrating the relevance of the academic courses to students so that students are not only prepared for careers, but also better prepared for college than they might be under traditional high school programs.

This approach differs from the Multiple Pathways to Graduation model in that this approach occurs with classrooms and directly related to instructional content. The Multiple Pathways to Graduation model is a district-level approach in which a district provides multiple options for learning through different types of high schools such as transfer schools.

Multiple Pathways to Graduation: Multiple Pathways to Graduation is a framework that represents a new way of envisioning the path towards graduation. Instead of assuming a linear process proceeding step by step towards graduation, Multiple Pathways to Graduation operates on the assumption that districts need to focus on early indicators, offering increased responsiveness, flexibility, and differentiated levels of support to help all students graduate. When a district adopts a Multiple Pathways to Graduation approach, it develops a customized mix of responses based on the size and needs of the at-risk student population. These responses could include such programmatic interventions as Bridge Programs, specialized orientations to high school, attendance monitoring strategies, and literacy programs. Districts can also make systemic changes through a portfolio of schools to offer a range of education options.

This approach differs from the Multiple Pathways Model. The Multiple Pathways to Graduation is a district-level approach in which a district provides multiple options for learning through different types of high schools such as transfer schools. A Multiple Pathways Model is a type of curriculum that consists of three components: college preparatory academic core classes, a choice of professional or technical core classes that offer academic and real-world applications, and field-based learning, usually in a career interest area identified by the student.

Narrative Text: A story about fictional or real events.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): A nationally representative and continuing standardized assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. This assessment is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMP): The national panel established by the President through an executive order in April 2006, charged with the responsibility to conduct a systematic review of the best available scientific evidence and recommend ways to advance the teaching and learning of mathematics, with a specific focus on preparation for learning algebra. The National Mathematics Panel's final report, Foundations for Success, was released in March 2008 and addresses the Critical Foundations in Grades Pre-K to 8 for success in algebra, as well as major topics in algebra. (See also Critical Foundations of Algebra and Major Topics of School Algebra.)

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB): The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the main federal law affecting education from kindergarten through high school. NCLB was signed into law in January 2002. NCLB is built on four principles: accountability for results, more choices for parents, greater local control and flexibility, and an emphasis on doing what works based on scientific research.

Number Composition and Decomposition: Number composition and number decomposition are not formal mathematical terms but are used to describe putting numbers together, as in putting 2 and 3 together to make 5, and breaking numbers apart, as in breaking 5 into 2 and 3.

Number Line: A term commonly defined as a line, traditionally represented as a horizontal one, on which a point has been designated as 0 and a point to its right has been designated as 1. Then the sequence of points to the right of 1 that maintain the same distance apart as that between 0 and 1 are designated as 2, 3, 4, etc. A similar sequence to the left of 0 are designated as -1, -2, -3, etc. Then every (real) number is just a point on this line so that the numbers strictly increase as they go from left to right.

Number Path: A number path is an informal precursor to a number line. It is a path of consecutively numbered "steps," such as the paths found on many children's board games along which game pieces are moved. Determining locations on number paths only requires counting, whereas determining locations on number lines requires the notion of distance.

Number Sense: In its most fundamental form, number sense entails an ability to immediately identify the numerical value associated with small quantities (e.g., 3 pennies), a facility with basic counting skills, and a proficiency in approximating the magnitudes of small numbers of objects and simple numerical operations. A more advanced type of number sense that children must acquire through formal instruction requires a principled understanding of place value, of how whole numbers can be composed and decomposed, and of the meaning of the basic arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It also requires understanding the commutative, associative, and distributive properties and knowing how to apply these principles to solve problems. This more highly developed form of number sense should extend to fractions and decimals (NMP Final Report, p. 27; NMP Report, Chapter 4-22).

Numerical Estimation: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to the process of translating between alternative quantitative representations, at least one of which is inexact and at least one of which is numerical and exact (NMP Report, Chapter 4-57).

Off Track for Graduation: Districts are shaping their own definition of what it means to be "off track" for graduation. However, a student who is off track is usually one or two years behind in completing graduation course requirements (e.g., credit accumulation). Students who are considered off track may also have sporadic attendance, which can contribute to course failure.

On Track for Graduation: Being on track usually means that the student is meeting state, district, and school standards (credit accumulation, attendance, etc.) to make yearly progress to graduation. Although the criteria for being on track may vary, on-track students are expected to graduate in four years.

On-Task Time: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to mean focused attention and practice, rather than motivation; paying attention to instruction or engaging in other forms of on-task behaviors in the mathematics classroom (NMP Report, Chapter 4-46, 4-47).

Onset: The part of the syllable that precedes the vowel of a syllable; the initial consonant (e.g., the onset of bag is b).

Onset and Rime: Parts of monosyllabic words in spoken language that are smaller than syllables but may be larger than phonemes. An onset is the initial consonant sound of a syllable (the onset of bag is b-).The rime is the part of a syllable that contains the vowel and all that follows it (the rime of bag is -ag). Onset-Rime Blending is the ability to take an onset and rime of a word and put them together. Onset-Rime Segmentation is the ability to separate a word into the onset.

Open Admissions: A college policy to admit all applicants.

Open-Ended Question: A question that is designed to elicit multiple word responses as opposed to a one-word response (e.g., "How would you ....?" instead of "What color are Billy's pants?").

Oral Language: The language used in talking and listening; in contrast to written language, which is the language used in writing and reading.

Oral Vocabulary: Words that are used in speaking or recognized in listening.

Out-of-school Program Coordinators: The person (or persons) in charge of directing, organizing, coordinating and acting as liaison to collaborate on the structures and outcomes of out-of-school time.

Pattern Books (Predictable Books): Books that have repeated words or sentences, rhymes, or other patterns.

PEER: An acronym intended to help teachers remember the following questioning sequence used during dialogic reading: The adult Prompts the child to say something about the book; Evaluates the child's response; Expands the child's response; and Repeats the prompt.

Peer Coaching: A staff development process where teaching colleagues share expertise and provide one another with feedback, support, and assistance for the purpose of refining present skills, learning new skills, and/or solving classroom-related problems.

Performance-Driven Systems: Performance-driven systems rely on a systematic approach to making continuous improvements, in particular, improvements to instruction to ensure that all students are learning and progressing. Building a culture that values the regular, consistent use of data is essential to supporting a performance-driven system.

Personalized Student Learning Plan: A formalized plan that involves students setting learning goals based on personal, academic, and career interests with the close support of adult mentors.

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound that changes the meanings of spoken words (e.g., if you change the first phoneme in bat from /b/ to /p/, the word bat changes to pat). A few words, such as "a" or "oh," have only one phoneme; most words have more than one phoneme (e.g., the word "if" has two phonemes /i/ and /f/). English has about 41-44 phonemes.

Phoneme Addition: Making a new word by adding a phoneme to an existing word. (Teacher: What word do you have if you add /s/ to the beginning of park? Children: spark.)

Phoneme Blending: Listening to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes, and then combining the phonemes to form a word. (Teacher: What word is /b/ /i/ /g/? Children: /b/ /i/ /g/ is big.)

Phoneme Categorization: Recognizing the word in a set of three or four words that has the "odd" sound. (Teacher: Which word doesn't belong? bun, bus, rug. Children: Rug does not belong. It doesn't begin with a /b/.)

Phoneme Deletion: Recognizing the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word. (Teacher: What is smile without the /s/? Children: Smile without the /s/ is mile.)

Phoneme Identity: Recognizing the same sounds in different words. (Teacher: What sound is the same in fix, fall, and fun? Children: The first sound, /f/, is the same.)

Phoneme Isolation: Recognizing and identifying individual sounds in a word. (Teacher: What is the first sound in van? Children: The first sound in van is /v/.)

Phoneme Segmentation: Breaking a word into its separate sounds, saying each sound as they tap out or count it. (Teacher: How many sounds are in grab? Children: /g/ /r/ /a/ /b/. Four sounds.)

Phoneme Substitution: Substituting one phoneme for another to make a new word. (Teacher: The word is bug. Change /g/ to /n/. What's the new word? Children: bun.)

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words (e.g., combining or blending the separate sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ to say the word cat).

Phonemic Awareness Narrative Text: A story about fictional or real events.

Phonics: A form of instruction to cultivate the understanding and use of the alphabetic principle: that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds in spoken language) and graphemes, the letters that represent those sounds in written language, and that this information can be used to read or decode words.

Phonological Awareness: A range of understandings related to the sounds of words and word parts, including identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language such as words, syllables, and onset and rime. It also includes phonemic awareness as well as other aspects of spoken language such as rhyming and syllabication.

Picture Book: An illustrated book with comparatively few words.

PLAN: As a "pre-ACT" test, PLAN is a powerful predictor of success on the ACT. Typically administered in the fall of sophomore year, PLAN includes four multiple-choice tests: English, Math, Reading, and Science.

Portfolio: A purposeful collection of work or documents that, taken as a whole, offers a picture of an individual's range of abilities (e.g., student learning outcome reports, samples of students' work).

Pre-Reading Skills: The skills children need to develop and learn before formal instruction in reading.

Predictive Factors: Predictive factors are those that can be used to predict students' ability to graduate from high school such as demographic factors. School data need to be examined for predictive factors such as students with special needs to ensure the school is meeting the needs of that population sector. Predictive factors cannot be changed by the school but they can be taken into account in program development and planning. Schools need to also consider comprehensive factors in planning for dropout prevention and recovery programs.

Predictive Validity: The extent to which a test can predict how well students will do in the area being measured a year or even two or three years later.

Prefix: A morpheme that precedes a root and that contributes to or modifies the meaning of a word, such as "re" in reprint.

Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test (PSAT): This test is an abbreviated form of the SAT I and is designed to give juniors an opportunity to practice taking a test which is similar but shorter (1 hour) than the SAT I. It is given in October of the junior year.

Preschool (Pre-Kindergarten or Nursery School): Programs designed for children who are 3 to 5 years old with early education experiences to prepare them for school.

Print Awareness (Concepts of Print or Conventions of Print): Basic knowledge about print, how it is typically organized on a page, and how it is used. (For example, print conveys meaning, print is read left to right, words are separated by spaces, and reading and writing are ways to get ideas and information.)

Print-Rich Environment: A setting in which the learner is surrounded by and has access to many different types of print (e.g., literary materials, informational texts, authentic materials, and environmental print).

Prior Knowledge: The schema, knowledge, and experience that a learner brings into a new learning situation. Existing knowledge is brought out so that it can be used to build new knowledge.

Procedural Knowledge: A formal terminology for "skills" (NMP Report, Chapter 4-7). (See also Conceptual Knowledge and Declarative Knowledge.)

Professional Development (also referred to as Staff Development or Inservice Education): Continuing education or training to keep up-to-date by enhancing skills, knowledge, and ability in an area of expertise, such as teaching.

Professional Learning Communities: Professional learning communities are groups of teachers and staff generally organized within a school or district that have allocated time together to collaborate on their professional development through a focus on curriculum development and classroom teaching. Teachers and staff work together on instructional design and provide collective feedback on their teaching, sometimes with the assistance of instructional coaches or mentors. Professional learning communities can provide an ongoing means for teachers to improve their practice.

Program Evaluation: A systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to assess the quality of an out-of-school program or expanded learning time school. Various forms of assessments such as student data, parent and teacher surveys are helpful to ensure effective evaluation.

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): A system of international assessments that focus on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. Its goal is to test and compare student performance across the world, with a view to improving educational methods and outcomes. PISA is organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries, and administered every three years.

Progress Monitoring: Any type of assessment that informs a teacher about a child's learning by keeping track of how well a learner is able to understand and complete a task, often accomplished by observing, questioning, and keeping written records. Progress monitoring data can be used to assess children's learning, plan and differentiate classroom instruction, and identify professional development needs.

Push-Out Dropout: Push-out dropouts are students who drop out because they face extremely serious academic or behavioral problems or have become a danger to the school environment, such as through displays of repeated violence, and are encouraged by staff either directly or indirectly to leave the school.

Reading: Making sense of print; the process of decoding print with fluency and comprehension.

Reading Comprehension: The ability to understand and gain meaning from what has been read.

Reading Proficiency: In Response to Intervention (RtI), proficiency in reading refers to student mastery of the foundational components of reading, including phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary.

Receptive Language: The ability to understand language that is heard. (See also Language Development and Expressive Language.)

Reciprocal Teaching: Reciprocal Teaching is a multiple-strategy instructional approach for teaching comprehension skills to students. Teachers teach students four strategies: asking questions about the text they are reading, summarizing parts of the text, clarifying words and sentences they don't understand, and predicting what might occur next in the text.

Recovery Power: Recovery power in district responsiveness means helping students who have left school return to a meaningful diploma-granting program. To reconnect young people to education, districts need to generate recovery power, built through (1) collaborating with community and government organizations, (2) integrating increased graduation rates into operations, and (3) putting in place strong and creative leadership.

Recreational or Extracurricular Activities: Organized activities, both academic and non-academic, designed to engage students outside their normal school day.

Recuperation and Recovery Power: Recuperation and recovery power refer to a district's ability to ensure that students who are off track have avenues for them to pursue a diploma. Districts can expand the availability of schools designed with recuperation and recovery mechanisms (e.g., transfer schools).

Recuperation Power: Recuperation power points to the district's capacity to help students make up lost credits and get back on track to graduation. Research shows that districts need to (1) have a range of recuperation options so that students can accelerate their learning and credit accumulation, (2) expand transfer schools to meet diverse needs of students, and (3) provide flexibility and incentives for credit recuperation.

Reentry/Recovery Programs: Reentry or recovery programs are education programs designed to bring dropouts back to school or to help them earn a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.

Regrouping: Regrouping refers to changing instructional groups based on progress monitoring data to better respond to students' changing learning needs.

Regular Decision: Most colleges have an early winter application deadline (January 1 or 15 or February 1); they generally notify candidates between March 1 and April 12. Students then have until May 1 (the common reply date) to respond to the colleges.

Regular School Day: Traditionally, a six-hour day of instruction, recreation, and lunch time for students. Students are typically mandated to attend school during the normal school day according to state laws.

Reliability: The degree to which an assessment yields consistency over time (how likely are scores to be similar if students take the test a week or so later?) and across testers (do scores change when different individuals administer the test?).

Repeated Failure Dropout: Repeated failure dropouts are students who receive some type of intervention(s) in order to help them succeed academically in school, but drop out of school because of repeated failure or frustration.

Representation: Something that stands for, depicts, or symbolizes real systems, objects, or processes. Educators speak of using "multiple representations" when they describe different ways of presenting the same set of ideas or problems. Representations can include concrete manipulatives, visual representations, or abstract symbols. In math, representations often include counting cubes, number lines, arrays, and strip diagrams; in reading, representations may include graphic organizers, picture or letter cards, and story maps.

Response to Intervention (RtI): Response to Intervention (RtI) is an early detection, prevention, and support system in education that integrates assessment and intervention within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and reduce behavior problems. With RtI, schools identify students at risk for poor learning outcomes; monitor student progress; provide multi-tiered, evidence-based interventions and adjust the intensity and nature of those interventions depending on a student's responsiveness; and identify students with learning disabilities.

Restructuring: Restructuring is the act of partially dismantling or otherwise reorganizing a company, school, or other organization for the purpose of making it more efficient. It may involve making dramatic changes to the operations, structure, staffing, or management of the company.

Retelling: Recalling the content of what was read or heard. The reader shares the sequences of events, characters, and other story elements required to demonstrate complete understanding of text with others.

Rhyme: Two or more corresponding sounds usually at the end of a word, such as play, weigh, say; also a verse which is composed of lines that end in a rhyme (e.g., Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are).

Rhyme Awareness: Understanding that two spoken words share the same ending vowel-consonant combination.

Rhyming: The ability to find words that share a common ending feature or sound combination.

Rime: Part of a syllable that contains the vowel and all that follows it (e.g., the rime of "bag" is "ag").

Rolling Admission: A term used to describe the application process in which an institution reviews applications as they are received and offers decisions to students soon after they are made. If students are applying for financial aid, they will follow aid application deadlines set by the school. Students may apply to other colleges and are not required to make a decision regarding enrollment before May 1.

Root Word: Words from other languages that are the origin of many English words. About 60 percent of all English words have Latin or Greek origins.

Rubric: A guide used to score performance assessments in a reliable, fair, and valid manner that is generally composed of dimensions for judging student performance, a scale for rating performances on each dimension, and standards of excellence for specified performance levels.

Scaffolded Instruction: Instruction in which the adult builds upon the child's knowledge and provides support that allows the child to perform more complex tasks.

Scaffolding: Providing students with specific support to accomplish tasks and develop understanding that they would not be able to manage on their own. The teacher provides support in the form of modeling, prompts, direct explanations, and targeted questions. As students begin to acquire mastery of targeted objectives, supports are reduced and the learning becomes more student-guided.

Scholarship: A form of financial assistance that does not require repayment and is usually made to a student who shows potential for distinction, usually in academic performance.

Scholastic Assessment Test I: Reasoning Test (SAT I): This standardized college admissions test measures students' mathematical, critical reading, and writing skills. Each section is graded on a scale from 200 to 800 points. Note: The test was formerly called the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

Scholastic Assessment Test II: Subject Tests (SAT II): One-hour tests offered in subjects such as English, foreign languages, science, history, and mathematics.

School Algebra: The National Mathematics Panel chose this term to encompass the full body of algebraic material that the Panel expects to be covered through high school, regardless of its organization into courses and levels. The Panel developed a clear concept of school algebra via its list of Major Topics of School Algebra and recommended that school algebra be consistently understood in terms of this list of topics (NMP Final Report, p. xvii; NMP Report, Chapter 3-xiv). (See also Authentic Algebra Course and Major Topics of School Algebra.)

School Improvement Status: A Title I school's school improvement status is based on whether it has made adequate yearly progress (AYP), as defined by the state. A school that has missed AYP for two consecutive years has the status of "identified for improvement." A school that misses for a third year is in the second year of identification for improvement. A school that misses for the fourth consecutive year is in "corrective action." A school that misses for the fifth year is in "planning for restructuring." A school that misses for the sixth year is in "restructuring."

School Turnaround: School turnaround occurs when a school with a history of underperformance dramatically raises and maintains higher student achievement within one to three years.

Scientific Method: A systematic way of testing hypotheses and acquiring knowledge using observable, empirical data. The exact nature of scientific inquiries may vary by field.

Scientifically Based Reading Research (SBRR): Empirical research that applies rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain valid knowledge, including research that employs systematic methods that draw on observation or experiment; has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or approved by a panel of independent experts through a comparably rigorous, objective, and scientific review; involves rigorous data analyses that are adequate to test the stated hypotheses and justify the general conclusions drawn; relies on measurements or observational methods that provide valid data across evaluators and observers and across multiple measurements and observations; and can be generalized.

Scope and Sequence: A "roadmap" or "blueprint" for teachers that provides an overall picture of an instructional program and includes the range of teaching content and the order or sequence in which it is taught.

Segmenting: Separating the individual phonemes, or sounds, of a word into discrete units.

Self-Efficacy: The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as the belief that one has the specific skills needed to be successful, which differs from self-esteem. Mathematics self-efficacy moderates the effect of ability on performance. In other words, ability is important for mathematics learning but is not sufficient; self-efficacy or confidence in one's mathematics ability is also crucial for high levels of achievement (NMP Report, Chapter 4-xii, 4-13).

Sensitivity: Sensitivity refers to how accurately a screening measure predicts which students are at risk. Sensitivity is calculated by determining the number of students who end up having difficulty in mathematics and then examining the percentage of those students predicted to be at risk on the screening measure. A screening measure with high sensitivity would have a high degree of accuracy. In general, sensitivity and specificity are related (as one increases the other usually decreases).

Sentence Segmenting: The ability to identify the individual words that compose a sentence.

Sequential Instruction: Teaching based on a sequence or continuum of skills arrayed according to their developmental order. Includes assessing whether children have mastered skills, reteaching as necessary, and then moving on to teach more advanced skills.

Service Providers: Service providers are individuals or external organizations working with states, districts, and schools to provide technology, professional development, and technical assistance for data-based decision making.

Shared Reading: An adult reading a book to one child or a small group of children without requiring extensive interactions from them.

Small Group Instruction: Groups of students organized together based on student data, age, and academic needs. Within those groups, students work on academic assignments, typically in a cooperative manner.

Small Learning Communities: A small learning community (SLC), also referred to as a school-within-a-school, is a form of school structure that is usually implemented in secondary schools to subdivide large school populations into smaller, autonomous groups of students and teachers. The primary purpose of restructuring schools into SLCs is to create a more personalized learning environment to better meet the needs of students. Each community will often share the same teachers and student members from grade to grade. SLCs are different from small schools, which are autonomous units that are able to make decisions for their schools. Small schools are not connected to a bigger high school entity.

Socratic Seminar: A discussion format where participants evaluate the concepts, principles, and issues in a particular text or artifact. Leaders ask questions about the text or artifact that prompt participants to reason, use evidence, and make connections.

Sound-Symbol Association: Knowledge of the various sounds in the English language and their correspondence to the letters and combinations of letters that represent those sounds. (See also Letter-Sound Correspondence.)

Spatial Skills: This set of skills involves the ability to process and use visual information. This skill set requires the ability to correctly perceive visual forms and to mentally manipulate and reconstruct visual shapes.

Specificity: Specificity refers to how accurately a screening measure predicts which students are not at risk. Specificity is calculated by determining the number of students who do not have a deficit in mathematics and then examining the percentage of those students predicted to not be at risk on the screening measure. A screening measure with high specificity would have a high degree of accuracy. In general, sensitivity and specificity are related (as one increases the other usually decreases).

Standard Protocols: Standard protocols (also known in RtI as Tier 2 intervention curricula) are tutoring programs taught to all students scoring below benchmark. These "one size fits all" programs address foundational skills and strategies that are essential to learning to read.

Standardized Test: A test that has specific procedures for administration and scoring so that scores are reliable and replicable, and often has norms for a reference group, ordinarily drawn from many schools or communities.

State Data-Based Decision-Making Initiatives: State data-based decision-making initiatives are conceptualized at the state level with a set of comprehensive goals, objectives, and purposes and with designated resources (such as funds and personnel) to support their development and implementation. State education agency leaders must communicate such policies to districts in the state and offer them support.

State Takeover: A state takeover arises from circumstances under which the state Board of Education may intervene in the governance and operation of a local school district.

Statistical Significance: Statistical significance refers to the probability that a result did not occur by chance alone. Typically, a result is considered statistically significant if the probability it occurred by chance alone is below 5 percent.

Status Dropout Rate: The status dropout rate reports the percentage of individuals in a given age range who are not in high school and have not earned a high school diploma or equivalency credential, irrespective of when they dropped out. For example, the status dropout rate in Springfield County School District is 10%, meaning that 10% of children aged 14 to 18 in the district are not in high school and have not earned a diploma or equivalency credential. The rate focuses on an overall age group as opposed to individuals in the U.S. school system, so it can be used to study general population issues.

Generally, status rates are much higher than event rates because they include all dropouts regardless of when they last attended school. Since status rates reveal the extent of the dropout problem in the population, this rate also can be used to estimate the broader impact of the dropout problem and the need for further education and training that will help dropouts participate fully in the economy and life of the nation.

Strip Diagram: A strip diagram (also called model diagram and bar diagram) is a type of visual representation showing relationships among quantities.

Structural Analysis: A procedure for teaching students to read words formed with prefixes, suffixes, or other meaningful word parts.

Student Aid Report (SAR): Reports the information from a student's FAFSA.

Student Engagement: Engagement involves interest and active participation in learning and schoolwork as well as in the social life of school. Engagement includes both behavioral and psychological components that are defined below. Both aspects of engagement have been associated with dropping out of school. Behavioral indicators of student engagement include attendance, class and extracurricular participation, effort in doing schoolwork, and avoidance of disciplinary actions (notably suspensions). Psychological student engagement includes interest and enthusiasm in school, a sense of belonging in the school, and identification with the school.

Student Growth: The change in achievement for an individual student between two or more points in time. For grades in which the state administers summative assessments in reading/language arts and mathematics, student growth data must be based on a student's score on the state's assessment. A state may also include other measures that are rigorous and comparable across classrooms.

Student-Centered Instruction: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to instruction in which primarily students are doing the teaching of the mathematics and that the majority of the interactions about the mathematics occur between and among students (NMP Report, Chapter 6-16). (See also Teacher-Directed Instruction.)

Suffix: An affix attached to the end of a base, root, or stem that changes the meaning or grammatical function of the word, for example, "en" in oxen.

Summarizing: A process in which a reader synthesizes the important ideas in a text. Teaching students to summarize helps them generate main ideas, connect central ideas, eliminate redundant and unnecessary information, and remember what they read.

Summative Assessment: An assessment that aims to summarize learning and development of learners at a particular time and after a specified period of work (e.g., end-of-course exam, unit tests). Summative assessment encompasses everything from statewide standardized tests to district benchmark or interim tests to everyday classroom tests.

Summer School: A way to provide additional learning time. A session offered for students to reinforce and improve academic and social skills during the summer.

Supplemental Educational Services (SES): Additional instruction designed to increase the academic achievement of students in schools in the second year of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring. These services, which are in addition to instruction provided during the school day, may include academic assistance such as tutoring, remediation, and other supplemental academic enrichment services.

Supplemental Instruction: Instruction that goes beyond that provided by the comprehensive core program because the core program does not provide enough instruction or practice in a key area to meet the needs of the students in a particular classroom or school.

Syllabication: The act of breaking words into syllables.

Syllable: A word part that contains a vowel or, in spoken language, a vowel sound (e.g., e-vent, news-pa-per).

Syllable Awareness: Understanding that spoken words are composed one or more syllables; this understanding is usually reflected in the ability to segment spoken words into syllables or to identify the original word if a teacher has segmented it.

Syllable Blending: The ability to distinguish units of sound and combine the parts (syllables) of words to form one word.

Syllable Segmenting: The ability to identify the units of sounds that make up one word.

Systematic Instruction: A carefully planned sequence for instruction that is strategic and carefully thought out before activities and lessons are planned. In Response to Intervention (RtI), systematic instruction builds skills gradually—first introducing them in isolation and then integrating them with other skills.

Targeted Assistance School: A targeted assistance school is one that receives Title I, Part A funds yet is ineligible or has chosen not to operate a Title I schoolwide program. The term "targeted assistance" signifies that the services are provided to a select group of children such as those identified as failing, or most at risk of failing, to meet the state's challenging content and student performance standards rather than for overall school improvement, as in schoolwide programs.

Teacher Mentoring: Support provided by experienced teachers to promote the development of new or less experienced teachers. (See also Coaching.)

Teacher-Directed Instruction: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to instruction in which primarily the teacher is communicating the mathematics to the students directly and in which the majority of interactions about the mathematics are between the teacher and the student (NMP Report, Chapter 6-14). (See also Student-Centered Instruction.)

Team Teaching: Team teaching is a process in which teachers are paired as partners in the classroom with the goal of personalizing the learning environment. Teachers can plan lessons and make classroom decisions together. Team teaching is designed to help teachers work individually with students more often, since one teacher can teach and the other can provide direct student support during the lesson. Teachers can also benefit from a collegial support system for working with difficult students.

Team teaching is different from co-teaching, which is an instructional arrangement where a regular and special educator teach together within a single classroom or group of students, some of whom have disabilities. Typically, the regular educator is responsible for the general class content and lesson plan, while the special educator adapts the content and presentation to meet the needs of individual students with learning difficulties.

Team-Assisted Individualization (TAI): The National Mathematics Panel defined this term as a learning strategy that combines individualization with cooperative work. This instructional approach involves heterogeneous groups of students helping each other, individualized problems based on student performance on a diagnostic test, and rewards based on both group and individual performance (NMP Report, Chapter 6-xvi).

Technical Assistance: Technical assistance is designed to provide school staff with ongoing job-embedded support in the day-to-day delivery of high quality instructional programs (e.g., reading and/or math coaches grade-level team meetings led by a consultant, etc). Often, the terms "professional development" and "technical assistance" are used interchangeably and interpreted to mean the same concept.

Technical Vocabulary: Refers to vocabulary specific to a particular topic.

Technology: The practical application of knowledge, such as science, to develop systems that address and solve problems, needs, and wants.

Testing Effect: The finding that learners will retain information better over time when given the opportunity to recall that information in the form of a test.

Text Comprehension: The reason for reading: understanding what is read by reading actively (making sense from text) and with purpose (for learning, understanding, or enjoyment).

Text Discussion: Discussions of text meaning and interpretation that provide students with the opportunity to have sustained exchanges with the teacher or other students, present and defend individual interpretations and points of view, use text content, background knowledge, and reasoning to support interpretations and conclusions, and listen to the points of view and reasoned arguments of others participating in the discussion.

Text Structure: Text structure refers to the semantic and syntactic organizational arrangements used to present written information. Common formats for text structure include compare/contrast, cause and effect, and sequencing.

Thematic Unit: A unit of study that is planned around common knowledge or concepts that develops important concepts, promotes the transfer of skills, and is relevant to the students' lives (e.g., animal homes, ocean).

Thinkaloud: Thinkalouds help students learn to monitor their thinking. For example, in reading an assigned passage, teachers are able to model the thinkaloud technique and discuss how good readers often re-read a sentence, read ahead to clarify, and/or look for context clues to make sense of what they read. Students may be directed by a series of questions, which they think about and answer aloud while reading. This process reveals how much they understand a text. As students become more adept at this technique they learn to generate their own questions to guide comprehension. The process of thinkalouds can also be applied as teachers demonstrate how they figure out how to decode a word or solve a math problem.

Title I: Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides extra resources to schools and school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty. These are areas in which academic performance tends to be low and the obstacles to raising performance are the greatest.

Title I, Part A: This program provides financial assistance to districts and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards. Title I funds are used to provide additional academic support and learning opportunities to help low-achieving children master challenging curricula and meet state standards in core academic subjects. For example, funds support extra instruction in reading and mathematics, as well as special preschool, after-school, and summer programs to extend and reinforce the regular school curriculum.

Trailing Data: Trailing data are types of achievement and instructional data that are collected and utilized after instruction is completed, such as results of annual state tests. Trailing data indicate effectiveness of past instructional practices.

Train the Trainer Model: The train the trainer model is a professional development approach in which some individuals are trained in a theory or technology and are then, in turn, responsible for training others in the same material.

Transfer: The ability to apply knowledge in new situations and to learn related information more quickly.

Transfer of Learning: As defined by the National Mathematics Panel, the ability to correctly apply one's learning beyond the exact examples studied to superficially similar problems (near transfer) or to superficially dissimilar problems (far transfer) (NMP Report, Chapter 4-7).

Transfer or Continuation Schools: Transfer or continuation schools are diploma-granting schools intentionally designed to serve students who are significantly off track to graduation. Upon entering, students are expected to stay in the school until they graduate. Transfer schools will vary in the levels of supportive services and flexibility. Transfer schools are a critical part of establishing multiple pathways to graduation.

Transition Power: Transition power refers to the district's ability to implement prevention and early intervention strategies to reduce the number of students falling off track to graduation, especially during transitions from sixth to seventh and eighth to ninth grades. Transition power, which can be thought of as two approaches, prevention and early intervention, seeks to ensure that students succeed in high school. Districts can utilize transition power by (1) expanding the capacity of schools to prevent students from falling off track and expanding types of schools that are effective in keeping struggling students on track, (2) creating incentives for schools to support successful transitions, focusing on early identification, and (3) developing a customized mix of responses.

Transitional Schools: Transitional schools are those designed to provide education and services for a specialized segment of students — for example, pregnant or parenting teens — during a set period of time, with the expectation that students will return to a comprehensive setting as soon as possible. One type of transitional schools that are run by districts or by regional entities are disciplinary schools. These schools are designed for students deemed to have behavioral problems or who are involved with the juvenile justice system. It is important that these schools offer academic and developmental supports to ensure that students are able to effectively transition back to school as rapidly as possible. Districts should monitor all transitional schools on academic gains while at the school as well as the degree to which students experience effective transitions back into school.

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS): An international assessment developed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) to measure trends in students' mathematics and science achievement in grades 4 and 8. It is designed to allow participating nations to measure students' progress in mathematics and science achievement on a regular 4-year cycle and compare students' educational achievement across countries. In the United States, TIMSS is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Triangulation: Triangulation is the process of using multiple data sources to address a particular question or problem and using evidence from each source to illuminate or temper evidence from other sources. It can also be thought of as using each data source to test and confirm evidence from other sources in order to arrive at a well-justified decision.

Trigonometry: The branch of mathematics that studies the relationships between the sides and the angles of triangles in a plane. The six standard trigonometric functions, which relate angles in a right triangle to ratios of its sides, are sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant. These functions turn out to play a fundamental role in all of mathematics.

Tutorials: The National Mathematics Panel used this term to refer to the attempt to introduce and teach new subject matter content, often by engaging students in one-to-one Socratic dialogue (e.g., tutorials using artificial intelligence to engage in dialogues). These are usually developed in situations in which a well-defined set of information must be acquired (NMP Report, Chapter 6-110). (See also Computer-Assisted Instruction, Computer-Based Instruction, and Drill and Practice Software.)

Tutoring: A method of personalized learning time provided during one-on-one or in small groups to provide additional, special, or remedial instruction. Tutoring is usually provided by the student's teacher or another person knowledgeable about the subject area.

Universal Screening: Universal screening is conducted in Response to Intervention (RtI) systems to identify or predict students who may be at risk for poor learning outcomes. Universal screening tests are typically brief, conducted with all students at a grade level, and followed by additional testing or short-term progress monitoring to corroborate students' risk status.

Unmet Need: The difference between the cost of education, the total financial aid award, plus expected family contributions.

User Conferences: User conferences are meetings that allow educators who are working with a given product to come together and learn more about the product and other similar products and how they work with each other.

Validity: The degree to which an assessment measures the performance or learning it's designed to measure.

Variable Encoding: The opportunity to make connections to new information in different ways. Varying the ways learners connect with new knowledge improves their retention of this knowledge over time.

Verbatim Memory: A term generally used to refer to literal information, such as specific actual numbers, and equations. The National Mathematics Panel identified two main types of memory, namely verbatim memory and gist memory. Verbatim recall of math knowledge is an essential feature of math education, and it requires a great deal of time, effort, and practice. A combination of gist knowledge and verbatim knowledge is critical for success in math. The importance of this distinction can be illustrated by a study of children's memory for numerical information within stories. The verbatim level consisted of the actual numbers within the stories; the gist level consisted of various numerical relations, such as "more," "less," "most," "least," and "between" (NMP Report, Chapter 4-xii, 4-9). (See also Gist Memory.)

Vertical Teams: Vertical teams are groups of teachers and other school staff such as counselors who work together to design a coherent sequence of learning that builds with increasing depth and complexity across grade levels to increase achievement and success for all students. Typically, vertical teams comprise teachers from two to three grade levels such as teachers from first, second, and third grades or teachers in a specific content area, such as seventh- and eighth-grade English teachers.

Vocabulary: Word knowledge. Listening vocabulary refers to the words a person knows when hearing them in oral speech. Speaking vocabulary refers to the words we use when we speak. Reading vocabulary refers to the words we know when we see them in print. Writing vocabulary refers to the words we use in writing.

Vowel: A letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel. The vowels in the English alphabet are represented by the letters a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.

Wait List: A term used by institutions to describe a process in which they may initially delay offering or denying admission, but rather extend the possibility of admission in the future. Colleges offer admission to wait list candidates if insufficient numbers of regularly admitted candidates accept their offers of admission.

Weekend Program: A way to provide additional learning time. Structured activity during the weekends that provides education and supplemental instruction for students. These programs give students the opportunity to continue learning beyond the normal school week.

Word Attack: An aspect of reading instruction that includes intentional strategies for learning to decode, sight read, and recognize written words.

Word Parts: Word parts include affixes (prefixes and suffixes), base words, and word roots.

Word Tiers: The criteria for what constitutes membership in each word tier are not sharply defined, but are loosely based on frequency and the utility for future reading. Tier I words are those typically in readers' vocabularies and should not be the focus of instruction. These high-frequency words are usually acquired very early. Tier II words are the focus of explicit vocabulary instruction prior to reading a text. Tier III words are rare words that are recommended for instruction only when they are encountered in a text.

Word Wall: A classroom display on which high-frequency words, categorized alphabetically, are usually displayed.

Worked Example: A problem statement accompanied by the presentation of an expert solution.

Working Memory: The storage system in which information is held while that information is being worked on.

About DWW

Site Tools

Global Links

What Is Doing What Works?

Glossary