Underachievement in education and the exploration of its factors have been in constant interest in educational research for years. According to McFarland et al., 2017) previously conducted research has found a relationship between family risk factors and negative educational outcomes which include low academic achievement, student retention, and…

Program exposure is a key element of implementation fidelity and refers to the amount of an intervention received by participants. For students using IXL, setting a target program exposure (i.e., an IXL usage goal) both allows monitoring of implementation fidelity and enhances students' motivational and learning outcomes. IXL's proposed optimal…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect extrinsic motivation had on student academic achievement in both English Language Arts (ELA) and math. The study was a quantitative, ex-post facto quasi-experimental design that compared student achievement on a benchmark assessment from one year to another. In this study, the instrument used…

The success of all students in schools, including students with learning differences, is contingent on how schools operationalize universally designed instruction, positive behavior support, and data-based decision-making for individualized and group-level interventions. When schools have fully functional multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS)…

The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest, control group design study was to investigate the effects of Response to Intervention (RtI) and computer-based programs on addressing literacy acquisition skills. This study is important because there is an inordinate number of students who are designated as requiring special…

In education, assessment helps shape teaching practices and student outcomes, as it influences how teachers perceive their roles, approach instruction, and engage with students. This study investigated 3rd-8th grade English Language Arts and mathematics teachers' conceptions of the NWEA MAP Growth assessment, focusing on four key factors: (1)…

WestEd has made substantial progress on the evidence of promise study for Clark County School District's (CCSD) 2017 Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) grant. WestEd collected the necessary student-level test score, course credit, and demographic data from CCSD for the study to identify statistically significant or substantively important…

Background: Reading is a vital skill, key to school success, necessary for employment, and essential for functioning in everyday life. Many attempts to increase literacy have focused on schools, yet "out of school" factors have a substantial impact on student learning (Clabaugh, 2008). One non-instructional factor that may be part of…

Michael Simonson's equivalency theory provided support for this study. Simonson's equivalency theory is built around the idea that while there should be different learning experiences for online and seated students, those learning experiences should be equivalent. Equivalency theory includes equivalency, learning experiences, appropriate…

This study identified the impact of elementary teachers' perceptions and the change that data-driven instruction had on student achievement on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment in English language arts and mathematics in an urban elementary charter school. The researcher secured an inner-city charter school in Tennessee to…

The Stanford Educational Data Archive (SEDA) is the first data set to allow comparisons of district academic achievement and growth from Grades 3 to 8 across the United States, shining a light on the distribution of educational opportunities. This study describes a convergent validity analysis of the SEDA growth estimates in mathematics and…

In response to legislation from the federal government and the rising number of ELs in public schools many school districts are searching for ways to ensure ELs are making adequate progress on English proficiency. The problem is defining the best method for teaching ELs in the mainstream classroom is difficult. The current gap in educational…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program as implemented by ABC District on pre-kindergarten students' Early Screening Inventory (ESI) academic assessment scores and kindergarten through second- grade students' Northwest Evaluation Association-Measure of Academic Progress (NWEA- MAP)…

Ethnoracial inequality in educational achievement and attainment is a long-standing feature of the American education system. For example, national reading assessments show that White fourth graders scored nearly a standard deviation higher than Black or Hispanic students on average in 2015 (NCES, 2015). The measurement and analysis of differences…

We draw on novel district-level test score data to describe novel approaches for measuring ethnoracial achievement gaps and assessing trends toward achievement equity from 2009 to 2016. Using SEDA data, we estimate gap trends for each grade over time in each district. We measure trends in both within-district gaps--comparing Black or Hispanic to…