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…

This study is focused on the threat of retention associated with test-based promotion in Grade 3. Through analyzing the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 data, we found that schools having such a policy apparently increased math instructional time but not reading instructional time in Grade 3. On average, the…

Background/Context: Chronic absenteeism is a serious problem that has been linked to lower academic achievement, diminished socioemotional skills, and an increased likelihood of high school dropout (Allensworth et al., 2021; Gottfried, 2014). As a result, many schools have begun to embrace early warning systems (EWS) as a tool to identify and flag…

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…

One consideration for selecting progress monitoring tools is the reliability in which the instrument measures student response to instruction. Researchers and vendors establish reliability of growth using two analytic methods: (a) calculating slopes to even and odd observations for each student and correlating the resulting slopes (split-half),…

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…

School-average achievement is often reported to have positive effects on individual achievement (peer spillover effect). However, it is well established that school-average achievement has negative effects on academic self-concept (big-fish-little-pond effect [BFLPE]) and that academic self-concept and achievement are positively correlated and…

Screening is necessary to detect risk and prevent reading failure. Yet the amount of screening that commonly occurs in U.S. schools may undermine its value, creating more error in decision making and lost instructional opportunity. This 2-year longitudinal study examined the decision accuracy associated with collecting concurrent reading screening…

Children with stronger self-regulation skills generally demonstrate greater overall success in school both academically and socially. However, there are few valid and reliable measures of self-regulation in middle elementary school. Such a measure could help identify whether a child is truly having difficulties. Thus, the Remembering Rules and…

The relationship between 2nd and 3rd grade teachers' linguistic knowledge and spelling instructional practices and their students' spelling gains from fall to spring was examined. Second grade (N = 16) and 3rd grade (N = 16) teachers were administered an instructional practices survey and a linguistic knowledge test. Total scores on the two…

Surveys are frequently used to inform consequential decisions about teachers, policies, and programs. Consequently, it is important to understand the validity of these instruments. This study assesses the validity of measures of instruction captured by an annual survey by comparing survey data with those of a validated daily log. The two…

Conventional multilevel modeling works well with purely hierarchical data; however, pure hierarchies rarely exist in real datasets. Applied researchers employ ad hoc procedures to create purely hierarchical data. For example, applied educational researchers either delete mobile participants' data from the analysis or identify the student only with…

This study examines the interplay between individual characteristics (social status, provictim attitudes, and family messages about conflict resolution) and classroom descriptive and injunctive norms (peer victimization behaviors and bullying-related beliefs, respectively) in explaining defending behavior. For this purpose, we used a…

Treatment dose is an understudied aspect of treatment effectiveness. This study compared the frequency with which a small-group mathematics intervention was delivered weekly (i.e., four times, twice, once) with a control condition while controlling for total duration. 101 at-risk students in grades 2-4 were randomly assigned to a condition…