Assessments of developmental spelling, also called spelling inventories, are commonly used to understand students' orthographic knowledge (i.e., knowledge of how written words work) and to determine their stages of spelling and reading development. The information generated by these assessments is used to inform teachers' grouping practices and…

School districts and states across the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic Region and the country as a whole have been modifying their teacher evaluation systems to identify more effective and less effective teachers and provide better feedback to improve instructional practice. The new systems typically include components related to…

Previous research has suggested that moral disengagement is strongly associated with bullying and bystander behavior. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a 5-week classroom-wide bullying intervention, "The Bullying Literature Project-Moral Disengagement Version (BLP-MD)", on moral disengagement and bullying among elementary…

As state tests of student achievement are used for an increasingly wide array of high- and low-stakes purposes, evaluating their instructional sensitivity is essential. This article uses data from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Project to examine the instructional sensitivity of 4 states' mathematics and English…

This study examined the contribution of classroom format on teaching effectiveness and achievement in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. Secondary data analyses of the Measures of Effective Teaching database included 464 US classrooms. Classrooms were defined as self-contained if a generalist teacher provided instruction on all subjects…

The present study investigated the predictive validity of the DIAL-3 kindergarten screening tool. Participants consisted of 178 students from a suburban school district located in northern Westchester County. Chi squared analyses and T-tests were used to compare DIAL-3 scores to later performance on New York State English Language Arts and…

Teacher preparation programs face great challenges in ensuring their graduates are prepared for the demands of today's classrooms. The authors explore how teacher accountability has evolved based upon federal legislation leading to adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Recognizing that future teachers will be held accountable for…

The community colleges in the state of New Jersey went through a process of establishing statewide cut-off scores for English and mathematics placement tests. The colleges wanted to communicate to secondary schools a consistent preparation that would be necessary for enrolling in Freshman Composition and College Algebra at the community college…

The purpose of the present study was to assess self-regulation of students with visual impairments across two academic subjects, language and math. The participants were 46 Greek students with visual impairments who completed self-regulation measures across the subject matters of language and math. Initially, the factorial validity of the scale…

The purpose of this study was to examine technical features of new and existing curriculum-based measures of written expression in terms of writing task, duration, and scoring procedures. Twenty-five third-, 43 fifth-, and 55 seventh-graders completed passage-copying tasks in 1.5 min and picture, narrative, and expository writing prompts in 3-7…

This pamphlet explains a child's Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) "Student Report for Parents/Guardians." In spring 1999, more than 210,000 students from grades 4, 8, and 10 in Massachusetts took the state's MCAS tests. All public students in grades 4, 8, and 10 are required to participate, and the Education Reform…