Using a causal-comparative research design, this study investigated the effectiveness of Differentiated Instruction Support Inclusion Services on fifth grade regular education and gifted students' Reading/Language Arts achievement. The study analyzed and compared the achievement of the regular education students who received no inclusion support…

As high schools have struggled to increase the academic performance of their students to meet state and national guidelines, all aspects of the schools' operations have been reviewed. This includes the type of schedule, block or traditional, used by the school. This study was a comparison of teacher attitudes and teaching strategies between two…

A current trend in education is that small teacher groups, called professional learning communities (PLC), are being advocated as a tool to help teachers reach struggling students. Educators planning to use PLC as an intervention strategy can benefit from research-based information about PLC best practices. This multiple case study addressed the…

Educational tools such as printed pamphlets and videos can enhance patients' understanding and memory of health-related information, but in order for such materials to be effective, designers of such tools should take care to understand the impact of variables such as the medium in which information is displayed, the type of information to be…

This dissertation is comprised of three essays exploring the performance of students on standardized tests in public schools. Since the passage of the "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB) in 2002, public schools have been subject to penalties for poor student achievement. In particular, NCLB requires states to measure reading and math test…

This thesis illustrated what can happen when academic culture disconnects from the cultures surrounding it. It showed that formal school environments are not always the best places to learn. A discussion of the debate between coherence and fragmentation learning theories illustrated academic chasms and a mindset that science education must…

Increasing standardized test scores in reading and math is of high importance to the California Department of Education to meet requirements mandated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act of 2001. More research is needed to understand the best ways to improve tests scores to meet concerns of the NCLB act. The purpose of the study was to evaluate…