Recent calls to hold preparation programs accountable for outcomes have led states to develop and adopt preparation program accountability systems. A primary feature of these systems is a focus on outcomes such as placement rates, retention rates, and graduates' effectiveness in improving K-12 student achievement. Yet, little research has examined…

Gifted education services in rural districts typically lag behind those in nonrural areas. Using district classifications assigned by the National Center for Education Statistics and Texas school district data (n = 1,029) from the Academic Excellence Indicator System, the role of school district classification on gifted education outcomes was…

Students enrolled in a Corps of Cadets program at Texas A&M University [N = 336] were surveyed to examine their leadership mindsets and whether their participation in a formal academic leadership program simultaneously influenced their hierarchical and systemic-thinking preferences. No significant differences were found between students…

English Language Learners (ELLs) are one of the fastest-growing K-12 populations across the nation. Educating secondary ELLs poses a unique challenge to U.S. schools. For instance, ELLs tend to experience high rates of poverty and attend segregated, underfunded, and unsafe schools. With the "League of United Latin American Citizens vs.…

Background: Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been proposed as means to increase the retention and engagement of minority--and more specifically Hispanic--college students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. This study explores the impact of student characteristics such as gender, classification,…

In order to evaluate the gender differences on the experience of aging, 142 individuals 50 years of age and older completed an interview regarding experiences with another individual conveying the message that they were "old." Interviewees were asked about the type of situation, the age and gender of the response person, and the…

In 4 word-translation experiments, we examined the different representational frameworks theory (Crutch & Warrington, 2005; 2010) that concrete words are represented primarily by category, whereas abstract words are represented by association. In our experiments, Chinese-English bilingual speakers were presented with an auditory Chinese word…

Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) is committed to providing partners with useful tools to help make inferences from the Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) interim assessment scores. One important tool is the concordance table between MAP and state summative assessments. Concordance tables have been used for decades to relate scores on…

There is a dearth of research regarding young children with high intellectual abilities, particularly research involving the direct observation of children in naturalistic settings. The current study examines 2 years of observations of young children (aged 37-71 months; n = 34) at an early childhood facility. The children were observed during the…

The University Interscholastic League (UIL) governs Texas public school academic, athletic, and music contests and is the largest inter-school organization of its kind in the world (University Interscholastic League, n.d.a). The music division of UIL is an important part of music education in Texas, with over half a million middle school and high…

The purpose of this study was to examine selected factors related to the 8th grade mathematics achievement levels of English Language Learner (ELL) students in selected South Texas middle schools. The dependent variable, ELL mathematics achievement, was measured by the ELL student's raw score on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness…

The purpose of the current study is to elaborate on the statistical nature of the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (Cummins, 1979). It is argued that reading skills across the languages of bilingual learners are differentially robust to interdependence, falling along a continuum mediated by the commonalities between Spanish and English.…

This study examined the participation rates and performance of students classified with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) in a statewide reading assessment. Gender, ethnicity, cognitive ability, school-level socioeconomic status, and instructional setting are analyzed as factors correlated with performance. Findings indicate that only 56%…