This study examined the heterogeneity of literacy profiles for adolescents with and without a specific learning disability (SLD) in the U.S. state of Florida Student subgroups displaying common patterns of performance in word-level skills and reading comprehension were identified through latent profile analysis. Results indicate most of the total…

Public policies often target individuals but within-family externalities of such interventions are understudied. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document how a third grade retention policy affects both the target children and their younger siblings. The policy improves test scores of both children while the spillover is up to 30% of…

This study aimed to describe 1-year changes in students' vocabulary in written narratives. Secondary aims included examination of accuracy and the relationship between lexical diversity and achievement. Participants included 749 students in first through eighth grades. Within-subjects 1-year change in diversity, productivity, and accuracy was…

This study investigates the correlation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. It was conducted with a sample of 55 second-grade students from SMA (Senior High School) Laboratorium Unsyiah, Banda Aceh. The data measuring morphological awareness and reading comprehension were collected through a test of morphological awareness…

Florida, from 1971 to 2014 has used the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) as a yearly accountability tool throughout the education system in the state (Bureau of K-12 Assessment, 2005). Schools use their own assessments to determine if students are making progress throughout the year. In one school district within Florida, Performance…

Explanatory patterns regarding situational differences in reading comprehension performance may be best captured by multidimensional reader profiles. Data from 56 third- and fifth-grade students were collected to investigate the applicability, scope, and convergent validity of a reader profiling scheme based on Alexander's (2005) reader profile…

This article examines Teach For America's (TFA) placement strategy in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, in which large numbers of TFA corps members are placed as clusters into a targeted set of disadvantaged schools, to investigate whether the large-scale infusion of TFA corps members into these schools induced broader improvements across the…

More than 20 percent of all school-aged children in the United States have vision problems, and low-income and minority children are disproportionately likely to have unmet vision care needs. Vision screening is common in U.S. schools, but it remains an open question whether screening alone is sufficient to improve student outcomes. We implemented…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational research was to investigate to what extent 2007 performance of third grade students who had been retained in 2006 for failing to attain proficiency on the Reading and Mathematics Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) predicted their performance in 2010 on the sixth grade Reading and Mathematics…

Researchers attempting to show that music has positive effects on children need to understand and control for preexisting differences between those who do and do not select into musical participation in the first place. Within a large-scale, communitywide, prospective, longitudinal study of predominantly low-income, ethnically diverse students (N…

Many American states require that students lacking basic reading proficiency after third grade be retained and remediated. We exploit a discontinuity in retention probabilities under Florida's test-based promotion policy to study its effects on student outcomes through high school. We find large positive effects on achievement that fade out…

The 2001 authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act and its standards and accountability requirements generated interest among state education agencies in Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina, which are served by the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, in monitoring changes in student reading and math proficiency at the school level.…

Expansion of the use of student test score data to measure teacher performance has fueled recent policy interest in using those data to measure the effects of school administrators as well. However, little research has considered the capacity of student performance data to uncover principal effects. Filling this gap, this article identifies…

The objective of this study was to determine the latent profiles of reading and language skills that characterized 7,752 students in kindergarten through tenth grade and to relate the profiles to norm-referenced reading outcomes. Reading and language skills were assessed with a computer-adaptive assessment administered in the middle of the year…

This article focuses on elementary principals as instructional leaders, as well as public school initiatives and educational accountability in the United States. It presents the methodology, instrumentation, measures of academic achievement in Florida, data collection, and processing procedures. Finally, it presents data analysis, results of the…