In 2019, declines in reading achievement across Texas motivated changes for teacher recertification, which required 60-hour professional development in the science of teaching reading (STR). The problem this study addressed was the challenges K-Grade 3 reading teachers encountered when implementing the recently adopted Reading Academy content at a…

In a common approach for scaling up effective educational practice, schools adopt evidence-based programs to be implemented with fidelity. An alternative approach assumes that programs should be adapted to local contexts. In this randomized trial of a reading intervention, we study a scaffolded sequence of implementation in which schools first…

Background: Recent curriculum studies raise a number of questions concerning teachers' implementation fidelity, including the extent to which fidelity to multiple curriculum components is achieved and measured and the extent to which fidelity serves as a mechanism for impacting children's learning. Objective: Within the context of a language and…

Nationally, two-thirds of high school students are unable to read and comprehend complex academic materials, think critically about texts, and synthesize information from multiple sources, or communicate what they have learned. Without a substantial change in their academic literacy, U.S. high school students face continued academic problems in…

Students learn or progress at their own paces. Each needs different amounts of support, at different points in a school career and at different times of the school year. Some need very little help to stay on track, while others are facing serious challenges in learning, in their behavior, or at home, and need significant interventions. It would…

One quality indicator of intervention research is the extent to which the intervention has a high degree of social validity, or practicality. In this study, I drew on Wolf's framework for social validity and used qualitative methods to ascertain five middle schoolteachers' perceptions of the social validity of System 44®--a phonics-based reading…

Successful implementation of evidence-based educational practices at scale is of great importance but has presented significant challenges. In this article, the authors address the following questions: How does the level of on-site technical assistance affect student outcomes? Do teachers' fidelity of treatment implementation and their perceptions…