The Houston Independent School District (HISD) currently offers two bilingual programs and two English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for English language learners (ELs). These programs facilitate ELs' integration into the regular school curriculum and ensure access to equal educational opportunities. Bilingual programs are offered in…

Texas state law requires that specialized linguistic programs be provided for students who are English language learners (EL). These programs are intended to facilitate ELs' integration into the regular school curriculum and ensure access to equal educational opportunities. This evaluation report summarizing the performance of students who…

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) currently offers three bilingual programs and two English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for English language learners (ELLs). These programs facilitate ELLs' integration into the regular school curriculum and ensure access to equal educational opportunities. This evaluation report summarizes the…

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) currently offers three bilingual programs and two English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for English language learners (ELLs). These programs are intended to facilitate ELLs' integration into the regular school curriculum and to ensure access to equal educational opportunities. This evaluation…

Transformative, anti-oppressive curricula, as theorized by Banks (1989, 2014) and Kumashiro (2001, 2009), directly address present-day realities of racism, discrimination, and oppression. According to Banks (1989), a transformative curriculum includes "the infusion of various perspectives, frames of reference, and content from various groups,…

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided free prekindergarten classes for eligible Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 school year. HISD offers full-day prekindergarten programs to all eligible students within its attendance boundaries. HISD collaborates with four federally-funded Head Start agencies that…

This study compared the effects of 2 supplemental interventions on the beginning reading performance of kindergarteners identified as at risk of reading difficulty. Students (N = 206) were assigned randomly at the classroom level either to an explicit/systematic commercial program or to a school-designed practice intervention taught 30 min per day…

This mixed-methods study analyzes the Spanish literacy performances of dual language students, including both emergent bilingual Latina/o and African American students, in the 1st grade of a dual language program. The findings suggest that emergent bilinguals across racial groups performed similarly well on Spanish literacy assessments overall.…

This brief focuses on whether outcomes are being reported for English Learners (ELs), and compares outcomes for ELs on select indicators (graduation rate and postsecondary enrollment) because the outcomes data being reported across states on certain indicators vary so widely that it makes cross-state comparisons challenging, if not impossible.…

This study examined the effects of an intensive shared book-reading intervention on the vocabulary development of preschool children who were at risk for vocabulary delay. The participants were 125 children, who the researchers stratified by classroom and randomly assigned to one of two shared book-reading conditions (i.e., the experimental, Words…

Optional Extended-Day Kindergarten benefits students above and beyond non-Optional Extended-Day kindergarten. While OEK students began the 2009-10 school year with significantly lower scores than non-OEK students, by the end of the year OEK students had closed this achievement gap and scored similarly to non-OEK students. In some cases OEK…

Millions of students are graduating from high school without the necessary reading and writing skills for career and college success. According to the long-term trend reading assessments of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the literacy of thirteen- and seventeen-year-olds on the NAEP has stagnated for close to four decades.…

Representative samples of fourth- and eighth-grade public school students from 21 urban districts participated in the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading. Eighteen of the districts participating in the 2011 NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) participated in earlier assessment years, while three districts…

About 5.3 million English Language Learners (ELLs)--students whose primary language is not English and whose English language skills are not sufficient to keep up with classes conducted only in English--are enrolled in PK-12 public schools across the United States. The number of these students increased dramatically in ten years, from 3.5 million…

This study hypothesized that HISD prekindergarten participation consistently correlated with better educational outcomes for students. Taking into account students' age differences through kindergarten enrollment, propensity score matching controlled for students' background characteristics. Three cohorts of students in this study were eligible or…