In October 2023, the California Department of Education released test scores for all students in Grades 3-8 and 11 for the 2022-23 school year. These results represent an opportunity to analyze whether and to what extent student learning has rebounded after the dramatic declines in scores resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and related school…

Research shows that third-grade reading proficiency is the most significant predictor of future success, including graduation rates, earning potential, crime, and health. Mastery of foundational literacy skills during preschool bolsters students' ability to learn to read before fourth grade when the transition from learning to read to reading to…

Education reform in the United States is heavily regulated and has undergone various iterations in the past several decades. With each passing legislation, government mandates and educational initiatives become the focus of reform. School districts must constantly find ways to keep up with increasing state and federal accountability standards.…

Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively recent entrant into the U.S. early education landscape, combining features of public pre-K and regular kindergarten. We provide the first estimates of the impact of Michigan's TK program on 3rd grade test scores. Using an augmented regression discontinuity design, we find that TK improves 3rd grade…

Many studies have been done on the short-term academic impacts of early-childhood education programs. The purpose of this study was to add to the educational literature on long-term impacts of early-childhood education programs by analyzing the long-term academic impacts that such programs had on students by the end of third grade. The variable of…

This study explored the impact of the 95 Phonics Core Program® (95 PCP) on student literacy achievement across third graders who started the school year at different ability levels. The primary focus of this report was to investigate the relationship between changes in phonics scores with the beginning and end-of-year i-Ready® assessments and…

"Magnetic Reading" is an evidence-based reading comprehension program for students in grades 3 through 5 built on four pedagogical pillars: knowledge-rich learning, culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, scaffolds to support learner variability, and data to inform instruction. This study uses a prospective matched comparison…

Hebrew allows the representation of the meaning of a few words in one dense form by using bound morphemes that linearly attach to the word. By manipulating words' density in text, that is, decomposing them into isolated words which changes the length of the text, it was possible to check the impact of density on reading comprehension in novice…

Much research has been conducted on teacher retention, student absences, and suspensions. The results of this research have been shaping the education of primary students. Through standardized or achievement tests, instructional leaders determine each student's level of intellectual knowledge. This knowledge is determined through reading, math,…

This quantitative, causal-comparative study aims to examine the academic performance of all third-grade students who participated in after-school tutoring from English Language Arts (ELA) in comparison to those who did not, using the results from the 2022-2023 Mississippi Academic Assessment Program English Language Arts (MAAP ELA) assessment. The…

The present study employed a difference-in-difference approach to determine the impact of a technologically enhanced diagnostic and formative assessment system implemented in one US state in kindergarten through third grade on school-level end-of-year third-grade reading test scores and percentage of students receiving special education services.…

Computer-based curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a relatively common practice, but surprisingly few studies have examined the reliability of computer-based CBM. This study sought to examine the reliability of CBM administered via paper/pencil versus the computer. Twenty-one of 25 students in two third-grade classes (N = 21) participated in two…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between face-to-face learning environments before the pandemic during the 2018-2019 school year and varied learning modalities after the pandemic during the 2020-2021 school year. NWEA MAP Growth data was collected for third-grade students in elementary schools in a rural school district…

Indiana public school districts are seeing a decline in third-graders' reading proficiency, and as of 2019, Indiana public school districts have implemented the national professional teaching standards for three decades. Previous research studies do not provide a consensus if a statistically significant relationship exists between employing…

This quantitative, nonexperimental study used Bronfenbrenner's process-person-context-time (PPCT) model to determine if mathematics scores of underprivileged, minority third- and fourth-grade students attending an inner-city school in a Central Oklahoma school district differed between their traditional 2018-2019 school year and post-lockdown…