Anson County School District wished to determine the relationship between Fast ForWord Scientific Learning data and North Carolina End of Grade reading scores at Anson Middle School in Anson County, North Carolina. The specific research questions that guided this study include: 1. How does the literacy intervention, Fast ForWord, affect EOG growth…

The intent of this study was to examine predictor variables significant in developing English Language Learners' (ELLs) English language proficiency skills and academic achievement in reading, math, and writing. Using a sequential mixed methods design, the study sought to unveil how state and federal mandates in assessments and programmatic…

This study set out to determine if the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS) cognitive processing model, a model previously investigated with children, would hold its factorial structure with adults. A collection of PASS experimental tasks were analyzed through Maximum Likelihood Factor Analysis. A four-factor solution consistent…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical comparison of two measures of school success -- a value-added assessment system and the federally-mandated system of adequate yearly progress (AYP) -- to identify highly effective urban schools in the USA and to explore the predictive relationship between evidence-based decision-making…

In this report, the authors describe the value-added models used as part of teacher evaluation systems in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and in eligible DC charter schools participating in Race to the Top. They estimated (1) teacher effectiveness in DCPS and eligible DC charter schools during the 2011-2012 school year; and (2)…

Sight reading is a functional skill which is essential for all musicians involved in particular fields of western classical music culture. In the last decade, expertise theory has shown that time spent on activities is a good predictor for later achievement in a domain. However, this study is based on the hypothesis that general and elementary…

The aim of the UK National Literacy Strategy is to raise standards in literacy. Strong evidence for its success has, however, been lacking: most of the available data comes from performance on tests administered in schools or from Office for Standards in Education reports and is vulnerable to suggestions of bias. An opportunistic analysis of data…

We examined whether strategies of memorization, transfer through elaboration, and metacognition accounted for reading, science, and mathematics achievement across 34 countries. 158,848 fifteen-year-olds completed a reading literacy test and a questionnaire. Of these students, 88,401 completed a science test, and 88,590 completed a mathematics…

The logic of using a gain score approach versus longitudinal causal models is studied in this secondary analysis of a complex data base. The gain score model used by the Federal Reserve Bank and the School District of Philadelphia in their "What Works in Reading?" study is successively refined using the LISREL structural equation…