When using response to intervention (RTI) for special education eligibility decisions, multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) may use performance level and rate of improvement (ROI) as two metrics when evaluating student responsiveness. Although examining student responsiveness to instruction is a critical component of an evaluation using RTI, previous…

A significant number of U.S. students are unable to read proficiently by fourth grade, and over two billion dollars are spent each year on students who repeat a grade due to reading problems. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to examine novice elementary teachers' perspectives of their self-efficacy in using adaptive instructional…

The problem addressed in this study was that although administrators in a rural northeastern Maryland school district are complying with state Senate Bill 651 by not suspending students in prekindergarten through second grade, administrators continue to struggle with preventing severe offenses from happening and reducing office referrals. The…

An eBook for Oral Health Literacy© curriculum was used as a brief intervention to help school-aged children use their functional health literacy skills of reading, writing, and speaking to learn about oral health hygiene and the importance of choosing healthy food and beverages for their teeth. The curriculum focused on building functional…

The accuracy of decision rules for progress monitoring data is influenced by multiple factors. This study examined the accuracy of decision rule recommendations with over 4,500 second-and third-grade students receiving a tier II reading intervention program. The sensitivity and specificity of three decision rule recommendations for predicting…

Morpheme-based literacy training programs are widely used in German primary schools. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) literacy gains can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fifty-two German-speaking second-graders participated in an eight-week…

Schools are increasingly adopting universal social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to support students' prosocial development and academic success. When adopted across contexts and student populations, SEL interventions can be implemented in different ways particularly under typical classroom conditions that are not part of research efficacy…

Data-based decision making (DBDM) is presumed to improve student performance in elementary schools in all subjects. The majority of studies in which DBDM effects have been evaluated have focused on mathematics. A hierarchical multiple single-subject design was used to measure effects of a 2-year training, in which entire school teams learned how…

In this study, the relationship between differentiated instruction, as an element of data-based decision making, and student achievement was examined. Classroom observations (n = 144) were used to measure teachers' differentiated instruction practices and to predict the mathematical achievement of 2nd- and 5th-grade students (n = 953). The…

Successful school reform is dependent on the quality of decisions made by educational leaders. In such decision making, educational leaders are charged with using sound research findings as the basis for choosing school reform initiatives. As part of the debate regarding the usability of various evaluative research designs in providing information…

Many schools identified by states as needing improvement through their Elementary and Secondary Education Act waivers have selected Response to Intervention (RTI), a three-tiered instruction program sometimes referred to as tiered levels of instruction, as one of their main strategies for improving school performance and closing achievement gaps.…

Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest assisted Milwaukee Public Schools in developing a fidelity monitoring system for measuring schools' progress in implementing Response to Intervention (RTI). The study examined the ratings produced by that system to determine the system's reliability, schools' progress in implementing RTI, and whether ratings…

Computer-based interventions are being used more in the classroom. Student responses to these interventions often contribute to decisions making regarding important outcomes. It is important to understand the effect of these interventions within the context of the intervention as well as across related context. The current study examined the…

This dissertation project represents a 2.5-year ethnographic study in a second-grade bilingual classroom and the homes of seven emergent bilingual children of Mexican-origin. This study examines how educational assessment policies shape the ways in which emergent bilingual children are socialized to express social and academic identities during…

Although past research has examined repeated reading (RR) and listening passage preview (LPP) in great detail, several issues related to their applied usage with individual students remain. Questions including the number of times students are required to engage with the instructional materials during treatment and tracking fluency gains on…