The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if a difference exists between male and female superintendents in rural Texas elementary schools in terms of student academic achievement measured through performance on the 3rd grade State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. The study engages one research question for…

Zearn Math is a popular software platform for K-8 mathematics learning, designed to enable all students to successfully access grade-level content. RAND researchers collaborated with Zearn, the product's developer, to design this evaluation. Then RAND conducted the study independently, randomly assigning 64 schools in an urban Texas district to…

Recently, there has been increasing evidence showing that males estimate whole numbers more accurately than females on the number line. However, relatively little is known about what factors contribute to this gender gap. The current study explored potential mediators of the gender difference in number line estimation, including spatial skills and…

The NWEA® state dashboard, Exploring the Educational Impacts of COVID-19, provides insight into the educational impacts of COVID-19 related academic disruptions for students in public schools within a state who participated in MAP® Growth™ assessments. This guide explains the analyses, statistics, terms, and data included in the dashboard, as well…

There are large gaps in reading skills by family income among school-aged children in the United States. Correlational evidence suggests that reading skills are strongly related to the amount of reading students do outside of school. Experimental evidence testing whether this relationship is causal is lacking. We report the results from a…

Creativity can be assessed using various methods, including divergent thinking performance, self-ratings, and teacher ratings. However, these measures may not always align, as they may not consistently identify creative potential in the same manner. The present study aimed to identify latent subgroups of students based on their observed…

English learners are a significant student population in the American public education system that should be considered when proactively addressing the achievement gap in the United States. Fuel by immigration, the number of English learners enrolled in the United States has been growing at a rapid rate compared to their monolingual peers. In this…

Effect sizes in the Cohen's d family are often used in education to compare estimates across studies, measures, and sample sizes. For example, effect sizes are used to compare gains in achievement students make over time, either in pre- and post-treatment studies or in the absence of intervention, such as when estimating achievement gaps. However,…

Acadience Reading (AR) is a screener for early detection of reading problems in elementary students. Limited research exists, however, on its technical adequacy for evaluation of English Learners (ELs). In this study, we tested the long-term predictive validity and diagnostic accuracies of AR and examined the differences between native…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to examine the extent to which differences were present by student demographic characteristic in the reading achievement of Texas Grade 3 students. In the first article, the extent to which the economic status (i.e., Poor, Not Poor) of Grade 3 underrepresented boys in Texas is related to…

Introduction: Differences in learning mathematics between boys and girls are being controversial according to different studies. However, those divergences are not always supported by empirical studies. One of the specific sources of difficulties on this topic is the fluency calculation learning, where performance differences between boys and…

Using testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states (plus D.C.), we investigate the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by race and school poverty. We find that remote instruction was a primary driver of widening achievement gaps. Math gaps did not widen in areas that remained in-person…

Fifteen third and fourth graders with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were asked to complete reading self-efficacy and reading activity scales and standardized tests of oral and written language to examine the relationships between reading self-efficacy, reading activity, oral language, and reading achievement, with gender and age…

This study aimed at investigating the impact of virtual trips on developing Arabic language oral skills among third grade students in Jordan. The researchers used a quasi-experimental design to answer the research questions. The study sample consisted of 48 students who were chosen purposely. The participants were divided randomly into two groups:…

The study aimed to investigate the Blended Education strategy in the achievement of the third grade students in mathematics. The study sample consisted of (97) male and female students distributed on four classes: (47) male and female students in the experimental group and (50) male and female students in the control group. To achieve the…