English Language Learners (ELLs) are at an academic disadvantage with the rest of general education because they are linguistically challenged, especially in reading. Educators are recommended to use best practices to provide a good quality education to ELLs through the use of instructional tools. One instructional tool that is recommended to use for ELLs to improve their reading comprehension and confidence are visual representations as graphic organizers. Graphic organizers are visual displays that allow ELLs to organize their thoughts and ideas without being linguistically challenged. There is a variety of graphic organizers and each graphic organizer has a specific purpose. This doctoral study was designed to analyze the effectiveness of graphic organizers in online reading assessments and the attitude of ELLs in using graphic organizers to answer online reading assessments. Due to the two objectives of this doctoral study, a mixed-research design was used to meet both research objectives. The quantitative research focused on studying the relationship between graphic organizers and the academic performance of ELLs. A bivariate Pearson Correlation analysis was conducted to determine if there was a positive or negative relationship between graphic organizers and academic performance. For the qualitative research, the focused was on determining the academic attitude of EL/Ls with graphic organizers for online reading assessments. Interviews were conducted to collect the data for the qualitative research. The research site was a school in South Texas with a large population of ELLs. The grade chose for this study was 5th grade since it is the grade level with the highest number of ELLs. In this study, 14 ELLs participated. The quantitively study found out that there is a strong relationship between the use of graphic organizers by ELLs and their academic performance. The qualitative study found out that ELLs view graphic organizers as an essential tool for answering online reading assessments and felt comfortable using them. Therefore, the use of graphic organizers is recommended in online reading assessments to improve students' academic performance and their attitudes when assessing their knowledge in reading. It is also recommended for teachers to receive the appropriate training to implement graphic organizers in the classroom to better help ELLs achieve their academic goals. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]