Statement of Purpose and Method of Study: This descriptive research aimed to explore third-grade reading laws in nine southeastern states. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 participants from the states included in this study and integrated both quantitative archival reading assessment data and qualitative interview data…

Many elementary school students require and may benefit from supplemental reading support and interventions that can be provided by afterschool programs. The problem addressed in this study was that it was not known if third grade students benefited from an afterschool reading program in one East Tennessee District. The purpose of this…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to determine how four rural school districts in East Tennessee worked to implement the third-grade retention law within their understanding and interpretation of the law to the benefit of the students and overall communities they serve. The study used a semi-structured questionnaire format conducted with a…

Facility with learning from multiple text documents is critical for college and career readiness. However, children with reading difficulties and disabilities have been largely excluded from research on multiple document comprehension. Accordingly, little is known about how children with reading difficulties and disabilities perform on…

The "Examining Implementation and Outcomes of the Project On-Track High-Dosage Literacy Tutoring Program" study describes the characteristics of students who participated in a full year of Project On-Track, a high-dosage, small-group literacy tutoring program for students in grade 1-3. Its online adaptive program, Amplify Reading, groups…

The problem addressed through this study was the inconsistent implementation of RTI2 in the mathematics classes for special education (SPED) upper elementary (i.e., Grades 3-5) students at a Southwestern, urban Tennessee school district (SUTSD). Students in SPED have low mathematics proficiency. Researchers have demonstrated that RTI2 is a process…

This study examined the effect of small class size intervention on student outcomes using reading achievement scores as measured by the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), a standardized, norm-referenced test, while controlling for independent variables inclusive of students' gender, race, socioeconomic status (SES), and environment. This…

Integration of content areas allows students to deepen and transfer knowledge. An area that allows for an organic integration of STEM content is through combining mathematics with science instruction. This paper describes how we integrated a lesson coupling flower structure with data representation in a Year 3 classroom. The lesson occurred over…

School districts in northeastern Tennessee have had persistently low proficiency rates in grade 3 English language arts, which were exacerbated by disruptions in schooling due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, the Niswonger Foundation, a technical assistance provider that supports these districts, developed Project On-Track, a high-dosage,…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there was a significant difference in the dependent variables- teacher expectations, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy among the three levels of the independent variable- membership in one three literacy networks in Tennessee- Leading Innovation for Tennessee (LIFT), Read to Be Ready…

As result of several federal policies over the last few decades, accountability measures for student learning and success have increased tremendously. Therefore, many school districts, including East Tennessee School District which was the subject of this study, implemented district-wide benchmark testing such as the Collaborative Assessment…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore a possible relationship between remote learning with 1:1 devices and reading performance for third graders in a school district in Tennessee by comparing differences between universal screener reading data from fall 2020 and universal screener reading data from both fall 2018 and fall 2019.…

Poverty has an enormous impact on children and their success in school. Children with low socioeconomic status often perform poorly in reading. Poor reading skills often lead to truancy, low rates of high school graduation, low-paying jobs, and cycles of illiteracy in generations of families. Secondary data was collected from the Tennessee…

This mixed-methods study was conducted to identify the effects of participation in the Governor's Early Literacy Foundation (GELF) summer pilot reading program on students' academic performance and reading motivation over 2 years. Data from rising first through third-grade students and teachers in 37 public school districts across the state of…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to first determine whether literacy performance changed over time for third and fourth graders of a private school in Tennessee with the implementation of the Units of Study co-authored by Lucy Calkins and Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (UOS). The researchers utilized data from the school's…