Schools in England are expected to 'close the gap' for a range of vulnerable pupils who are achieving below the levels seen amongst their same-aged peers. They are also highly accountable for additional funding that is provided to support this goal. The project reported here involved collating and analysing a range of data in order to evaluate the…

Teaching assistants are not always utilised effectively in mathematics classrooms. Moreover, there is limited research examining instructional models that might more meaningfully incorporate teaching assistants into the teaching and learning of mathematics. To address this gap in the literature, the current study explored three distinct…

This study investigated the effect of a school-based and teacher-led psychosocial intervention that targeted academic underachievement among conflict-affected youths. We hypothesized that participants in the intervention would experience improved school functioning and reduced levels of stress-related symptoms after the intervention, in comparison…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the Capturing Kids' Hearts professional development process as it relates to student-teacher relationships. This study sought to determine teachers' perceptions regarding student-teacher relationships. The study was to ascertain the effect of the Capturing Kids' Hearts professional development…

Reading difficulties may have multiple causes. Effective approaches to reading intervention need to target the specific causes for individual readers. The Early Reading Intervention Knowledge program comprises three intervention pathways: a phonological-phonemic pathway, a phonic-orthographic pathway, and an oral language pathway. This study…

Research has shown that various individual factors play an important role in the underachievement of gifted students. Most often discussed as predictors of underachievement are motivation, learning behavior, and emotions. To examine which specific constructs from these fields simultaneously predict underachievement among gifted fourth graders,…

This study examined the impact of computer-assisted instruction on the mathematics performance of underachieving fifth-grade students in a rural school district in South Carolina. The instructional technology program ([IF) is South Carolina's response to addressing the needs of its young, struggling math students. The 449 fifth-grade students in…

Dialogic Reading (DR) is a form of interactive shared book reading which promotes children's active participation in reading. Previous studies have demonstrated that DR positively affects young children's literacy development. This small-scale study extends existing DR research to all-male dyads to examine whether DR has a greater impact on boys'…

Schools frequently increase the instructional time to improve primary school children's math and reading skills. There is, however, little evidence that math and reading skills are effectively improved by these instruction-time increases. This study evaluates "Playing for Success" (PfS), an extended school day program for underachieving…

Florida lawmakers began a comprehensive education reform effort in 1999 combining accountability, transparency, and parental choice with other far-reaching changes. In March 2010, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released new results showing just how successful Florida's reforms have been and how futile Oklahoma's efforts…

The purpose of the study was to determine the longitudinal effects of a Title I reading component on students in grades two through five from 1976 through 1980. The following questions were considered in the analysis of performance among reading participants: (1) Do the same students remain in Title I year after year? (2) Do students who…

Many schools have established their own remedial educational programs to help students at relatively high risk of academic failure. Traditionally such remediation programs have been designed to remediate knowledge of specific content or teach study skills. Such courses have been generally ineffective. This study examined the teaching of thinking…

Funded through the Ohio Disadvantaged Pupil Program Fund, the Columbus Public Schools' Instructional Aide (IA) Program served 309 kindergarten children and 1,793 first-grade students during the 1988-89 school year. The goal of the IA program was to provide an educational support program for underachieving pupils. Instructional aides were trained…

THIS STUDY WAS DESIGNED TO TEST THE DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTIVENESS AND INTERACTION EFFECTS OF SEVERAL METHODS DESIGNED TO IMPROVE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTS' ATTITUDES AND THE UNDERACHIEVEMENT OF THEIR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN. THE INVESTIGATION ALSO ATTEMPTED TO EXTEND AN EARLIER STUDY ON THE EFFECTS BROUGHT ABOUT IN CHILDREN BY EMPHASIZING…

THIS REPORT DESCRIBES A SPECIAL PROJECT IN SOME DISADVANTAGED PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN A CHICAGO SCHOOL DISTRICT. OVERAGE, UNDERACHIEVING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PUPILS WERE OFFERED YEAR-ROUND SPECIAL INSTRUCTION AND AN AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAM WHICH PROVIDED VOCATIONAL SKILL TRAINING, CULTURAL ACTIVITIES, AND PART-TIME JOBS. THE PRIMARY GOAL OF THE PROJECT WAS TO…