Research Findings: The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which the quality of teacher-child interactions and teachers' self-reported curriculum emphases are related to children's reading skill development during their 1st school year. To accomplish this, we assessed the reading skills of 1,029 Finnish children (M…

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) describes Reading Comprehension as the product of distinct child-level variance in decoding (D) and linguistic comprehension (LC) component abilities. When used as a model for educational policy, distinct classroom-level influences of each of the components of the SVR model have been assumed, but have not yet been…

There is a lack of knowledge regarding reading development and predictors of reading development for Language Minority students (LMs) such as Asians. In particular, the research base is limited regarding the effectiveness of different reading instructional emphases for Asian LMs. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether language…

Factors such as weak early literacy skills and living in poverty may put young students at risk for reading disabilities. While home literacy activities and access to literacy materials have been associated with positive reading outcomes for urban and suburban students, little is known about home literacy environments of rural early elementary…

This study investigated the relationship between elementary classroom (N = 50) reading activities in Year 1 and reading performance (i.e., passage comprehension, letter-word identification, and word attack) 1 year later for English language learners (ELLs; N = 270). A cross-classification hierarchical model indicated that compared to other reading…

Much of the research on curriculum-based measurement (CBM) in reading has focused on oral reading fluency (ORF). However, ORF is only one of five critical reading skill areas in the wider construct of reading that includes foundational skills such as phonological awareness and phonics. In this research brief, we address the construct of readiness…

Prior research has documented that classroom-level variables have a significant effect on student outcomes; however, previous findings have typically focused on average student outcomes and have only recently begun to use hierarchical linear modeling techniques. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of classroom-level variables on the…

We addressed whether the degree of structure of reading content delivery to the children or degree of professional development support for the teachers was related to kindergarten through second-grade students' 2-year reading growth in high-poverty, low-performing schools. There were four categories of data sources: (a) classroom,…

The authors conducted an experiment during the 2003-2004 school year to determine whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a product to help elementary students learn to read and speak English, was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than materials already in place. In the California study, 384 English…

The authors were asked to find out whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a supplementary, text-based product to help elementary school students learn to read and speak English was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than the materials the districts already had in place. They conducted an experiment…