This paper reviews the research literature on the relationship between parental involvement (PI) and academic achievement, with special focus on the secondary school (middle and high school) level. The results first present how individual PI variables correlate with academic achievement and then move to more complex analyses of multiple variables on the general construct described in the literature. Several PI variables with correlations to academic achievement show promise: (a) communication between children and parents about school activities and plans, (b) parents holding high expectations/aspirations for their children's schooling, and (c) parents employing an authoritative parenting style. We end the results section by discussing the findings in light of the limitations of nonexperimental research and the different effects of children's versus parents' perspectives on academic achievement.

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The Internet is increasingly being used as a medium for educational software in the form of miniature applications (e.g., applets) The Internet is increasingly becoming a vehicle to design, develop, and publish educational software in the form of miniature applications (e.g., applets) that can be used to explore specific problem contexts or concepts in a domain. The design of technology tools has the potential to dramatically influence how students interact with tools, and these interactions in turn may influence students' content area understanding and problem solving. However, the rapid development and dissemination of such tools in many cases occur without an explicit set of design principles in place. The purpose of this article is to describe the process that IDEA (Identifying Design principles in Educational Applets) participants used to cull design principles from a library of applets developed for mathematics education. We view the process of extracting these design principles as a first step in a broader methodology of proposing, refining, vetting, and using design principles.Design principles published for educational software range in their specificity depending on the tools being analyzed. For example, Sinclaire (2003) studied student interactions with javabased dynamic geometry sketches that are accompanied by a set of questions to guide student exploration of the objects in the sketches. From her analysis of student work with the sketches, she has extracted a set of guiding principles that should inform future development (e.g., questions should aim to focus student attention on aspects of the sketch, whereas the 99sketch must provide the visual stimulus to draw attention through color, motion and markings).One example of a general list of design principles is published in Clements's (2000) review of research of the use of computers in mathematical problem solving, in which he suggests several contributions that the use of computers can make to facilitate students' problem solving. As another general example, Schoenfeld (1985) contributed a framework of factors that affect student abilities to solve problems, which in turn could inform the design of educational software for problem solving. For example, as students are solving a problem, they need to implement strategies, use resources, and evaluate their progress so that they are aware of and critically examining their own decision making. In a technological environment, the resources available to students include their knowledge of concepts, facts, and procedures, as well as those offered by the technology. Students need knowledge of how to use the technology, and how the various objects and actions on those objects can aid their problem solving. The presence of a particular technology tool also affects the available strategies a student may use during problem solving, since a tool may afford or constrain certain actions, which make some strategies more accessible than others.The National Science Foundation-funded Educational Software Componen...

District‐level policymakers are challenged to use evidence of student achievement to make policy decisions, such as professional development and other school improvement plans. They currently receive reports of student achievement data that are complex, difficult to read, and even harder to interpret. Using the research literature on policymakers' use of data and conducting focus groups and interviews, we elicited information on their roles and responsibilities, as well as questions these people would like to have answered from achievement data. We propose an evidence‐centered reporting framework to help policymakers determine which data they need, in order to design a series of reports that will answer their questions and to help them make sense of the data in support of policy decisions.