We examined student reading achievement in rural and non-rural school districts in Texas. Our research questions probed the improvement in student performance over time, differences in the number of students achieving at different performance levels, and the impact of district-level characteristics on reading achievement. Through quantitative…

Purpose: Collective efficacy (CE)--a group's belief in its capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to reach a goal--is an important organizational property because it facilitates goal attainment. The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was: (1) to affirm the link between CE and student achievement;…

In an era of social media, and amid the coronavirus pandemic, teachers' curation of instructional resources stands as an opportunity to observe teachers' planning and conceptualization of their practice in real time. This work explores the resources teachers curate, their rigor, and the effects on students' learning across years. Merging big data…

This study examined the factors that determined the science achievement of fourth-grade students on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 in the USA. The data were retrieved from the TIMSS international database and imported to the R program for manipulation. The EdSurvey package was used to conduct multilevel…

Based upon the ecological perspective and the social cognitive theory, this study examined the role of reading self-efficacy in the associations of contextual factors with reading achievement by establishing an educational ecology of reading. The model included student factors, student/home factors, student/school factors, and school factors of…

Research has shown that racial/ethnic diversity in elementary schools and classrooms benefits children's academic achievement and feelings of safety and belonging. The current study aimed to expand on existing research by examining associations between classroom racial/ethnic composition and upper elementary children's social-emotional development…

We compared students' performance on a paper-based test (PBT) and three computer-based tests (CBTs). The three computer-based tests used different test navigation and answer selection features, allowing us to examine how these features affect student performance. The study sample consisted of 9,698 fourth through twelfth grade students from across…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction that met Curriculum Associates' recommended usage levels on mathematics achievement, as measured by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) mathematics assessment. This study compared mathematics achievement growth of students who used…

The Reading and Me Survey (R&MS) measures reading self-perceptions and enjoyment of reading of intermediate elementary students and parallels the Math & Me Survey (M&MS). We examined its psychometric properties through content validation, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and reliability and…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction that met Curriculum Associates' recommended usage levels on ELA achievement, as measured by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) ELA assessment. This study compared the ELA achievement growth in the 2020-21 school year of students who…

Computer adaptive tests (CATs) hold promise to monitor student progress within multitiered systems of support. However, the relationship between how long and how often data are collected and the technical adequacy of growth estimates from CATs has not been explored. Given CAT administration times, it is important to identify optimal data…

School districts are a focus of education reform efforts in the United States, but there is very little existing research about how important they are to student achievement. We fill this gap in the literature using 10 years of student-level, statewide data on fourth- and fifth-grade students in Florida and North Carolina. A variance decomposition…

We examined the effects of peer preference and teacher preference for students, students' perceived relationship with their teacher and student ethnicity on peer victimization in late elementary school. Participants were students in the third through fifth grades in four public elementary schools in a southern state. Using hierarchical linear…

Mathematical communication has been an important feature of standards documents since National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM) (1989) "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards." Such an emphasis has influenced content standards of states from then to present. This study examined how effective the prevalence of various forms of…

Purpose: Individual differences in vocabulary development may affect academic or social opportunities. It has been proposed that individual differences in word reading could affect the rate of vocabulary growth, mediated by the amount of reading experience, a process referred to as a "Matthew effect" (Stanovich, 1986). Method: In the…