Online education has exploded in popularity. While there is ample research on predictors of traditional college student success, little research has been done on effective methods of predicting student success in online education. In this study, a number of demographic variables including GPA, ACT, gender, age and others were examined to determine…

With the advent of the Internet and the rapid growth of educational software, high schools are applying new instructional strategies with their students, including online and hybrid education. Hybrid education combines face-to-face encounters with online methods; students attend classroom sessions with their teachers and peers, and they engage…

The purpose of this study was to analyze school and district characteristics for 2005-2006 through 2007-2008 to determine which factors impacted science achievement for the graduating class of 2008-2009 in Tennessee. School size, socioeconomic status, per pupil instructional expenditures and rurality/urbanicity were predictor variables.…

Cross-cultural changes were accompanied by the sovereignty transition of Hong Kong during the TIMSS data collection, which triggered migration of intellectual families between Hong Kong and other places. To enhance comparability of the urban setting, this investigation focuses on Singapore and Hong Kong for having similar Chinese majority and…

A recent study in the USA documented the existence and growth of "excellence gaps" among students. These gaps are similar to the minimum competency achievement gaps that proliferate in policy discussions in many Western countries, but excellence gaps focus on the highest level of achievement rather than minimum competency. We extend this…

This article addresses the serious and growing need to improve science instruction and science achievement for all students. We will describe the results of a 3-year study that transformed science instruction and student achievement at two high-poverty ethnically diverse public elementary schools in Texas. The school-wide intervention included…

The performance of English language learners (ELLs) has been a concern given the rapidly changing demographics in US K-12 education. This study aimed to examine whether students' English language status has an impact on their inquiry science performance. Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis was conducted with regard to ELL status on an…

In a report issued in 2010, the authors found only 6 percent of U.S. students performing at the advanced level in mathematics, a percentage lower than those attained by 30 other countries. And the problem is not limited to top-performing students. In 2011, they showed that just 32 percent of 8th graders in the United States were proficient in…

Comprehension strategies, while helpful, are not sufficient to produce student achievement at high levels. The authors examine the role of background knowledge and vocabulary in developing understanding and facilitating achievement. Through purposeful instruction in vocabulary and by building and activating background knowledge, teachers can help…

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in single gender education. Emerging science has proven that boys and girls learn differently. This study compared fifth grade single-gender classes to fifth grade traditional, coeducational classes in the same urban middle school. The following were compared: students' academic achievement;…

This report describes New City Charter School student achievement in the 2008-09 school year, the school's sixth operating year. The number of students enrolled in the school was 125, an increase from 60 students enrolled the first year of the school. Student academic achievement is measured using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement…

The study intends to choose between two alternative explanations for the low attainment of Arabic-speaking students in reading literacy who participated in the PIRLS (2006), i.e., one that relates to lower socioeconomic conditions in the Arabic-speaking sector, and another that relates to the diglossic situation in Arabic. After controlling for…

Researchers, policy officials, and the wider public in Japan and abroad often hold different views about the quality of Japanese education. Whereas Western researchers are attracted by the academic performance of Japanese students in international assessment studies, Japanese university professors launched a public debate in 1999 about declining…

This study was conducted to determine the level of student teachers' understandings of Newton's laws of motion and relating these levels to identify student teachers' models of understanding. An achievement test composed of two parts comprising 12 open ended questions was constructed and given to 45 pre-service classroom teachers. The first part…

This mixed methods study examined 73 5th graders' flow experience in a game-based science learning environment using two gameplay approaches (solo and collaborative gameplay). Both survey and focus group interview findings revealed that students had high flow experience; however, there were no flow experience differences that were contingent upon…