This correlational, explanatory study utilized multiple linear and hierarchical regression to examine the predictive power of socioeconomic, parental and district factors on the total percentage of students who scored Proficient or Advanced Proficient on the 2013 MCAS Grade 4 language arts and mathematics test. The population for this study…

This quantitative study examined the relationships between instructional leadership practices of elementary school principals in high-poverty schools and changes in teachers' ELA instructional practices. This research sought to identify principals' perceptions about their use of instructional leadership practices and the teaching practices used in…

Background/Context: While some commentators view education as a social mobility mechanism, many scholars argue that schools reproduce rather than challenge social inequality. A vast literature on the role of family background and educational stratification identifies various factors that help account for how schools contribute to reproducing…

Interim tests are a central component of district-wide assessment systems, yet their technical quality to guide decisions (e.g., instructional) has been repeatedly questioned. In response, the study purpose was to investigate the validity of a series of English Language Arts (ELA) interim assessments in terms of dimensionality and prediction of…

The purpose for this correlational, cross-sectional, explanatory was to explain the influence of the length of the school day on the total percentage of students who scored Proficient or Advanced Proficient (TPAP) on the New Jersey Ask (NJ ASK) in Language Arts and Mathematics in Grades 6-8 in for student populations with low, median, and high…

Child homelessness has recently reached levels unprecedented in the United States since the Great Depression. Contemporary research has attempted to isolate the effects of homelessness on education, with mixed results. This study reports results from a study in one large urban area and finds that there is no meaningful difference in achievement…

Background/Context: Throughout schooling, English learners (ELs) perform well below their monolingual English-speaking peers on literacy assessments, and Hispanics make up the majority of EL students in the United States. There is a strong consensus about the importance of early English oral language skills for ELs' literacy development, yet…