A fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study the comprehensive teacher and principal evaluation…

Nationwide, a growing percentage of kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) teachers report regularly using standards-aligned English language arts and math curriculum materials. Despite this uptick in the regular usage of standards-aligned materials across the United States, not all teachers use these materials for the majority of their…

This dissertation explored teachers' perceptions of achieving grade-level foundational reading literacy skills. Despite the recognized significance of reading literacy, many students struggled to attain proficiency, prompting an investigation into teachers' perspectives. The study adopted a mixed-methods research design, with PreK-Middle School…

This mixed-methodology study explores the impact of the Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words (SIPPS) program on the reading success of English Language Learners (ELL) at a Title 1 public school in the Southeastern United States. The literature review emphasizes the importance of educator training and…

The learning gap between intermediate students on grade level and those below grade level continues to grow. Intermediate students with below-grade-level reading comprehension skills struggle with informational texts and across-content material. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore parent and teacher perceptions of…

Learning to read is a primary task of students at the beginning of their elementary years. For some students, learning to read is a struggle. Support for struggling students often comes from reading specialists who can provide further support beyond the classroom through Title I services. Support has not been consistent since March 2020, due to…

This study used a phenomenological investigation to examine leaders' perceptions of the implementation and impact of reading intervention programs. This study aimed to gain new insight into implementation challenges and effectiveness of reading intervention in Title I schools and add to the literature about the impact of said interventions from…

In the digital era, traditional communication has undergone a drastic transformation into computer-mediated communication (CMC), which can be classified into synchronous CMC (SCMC) and asynchronous CMC (ASCMC). This study compared the effects of extracurricular CMC among students about schoolwork on students' digital reading achievement between…

The unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states (e.g., Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee) calls for better understanding of the relation between their bilingual vocabulary skills and English reading achievement. The current study focused on school-age Spanish-English DLLs (N = 60) in…

To estimate the long-term effects of the Reading Recovery® intervention, a regression discontinuity design (RD) was implemented in a randomly selected sample of Reading Recovery schools during each year of the federally-funded i3 Scale-Up external evaluation (2011-2015) and also in one additional cohort during the 2016-17 school year. Long-term…

Given the importance of early literacy to long-term student success, by 2021, 41 states and the District of Columbia adopted early literacy policies to improve student literacy by the end of third grade. We use an event-study approach to examine the impact of these policies on high- and low-stakes test scores. Our results suggest that adopting an…

This study addressed the effects of Strategies for Teaching Reading, Information, and Vocabulary Effectively (STRIVE), a distributed professional development (PD) model designed to help teachers implement reading comprehension and vocabulary practices in fourth grade social studies classes. Schools (n = 81 schools, n = 235 teachers, n = 4,757…

This research presents a novel reading fluency (rf) measurement formula that accounts for both reading rate and comprehension. Possible formulas were investigated with 68 participants in a strategic reading course in an IEP at a small Pacific Island university. The selected formula's scores demonstrated concurrent validity through strong…

When unified status was granted to numerous school districts, school boards developed redistricting plans to implement neighborhood schools. Social justice advocates decried these plans as they reversed over 40 years of progress, as many of these efforts resulted in resegregating schools homogenously grouped by race and wealth. Using piecewise and…

South Carolina's public education system is broken. For the past several years, the State of South Carolina and the nation have somehow managed to do the nearly impossible. Both have produced more English Language Learning (ELL) students to be proficient in English Language Arts (ELA) (i.e., reading, writing, and usage) than native English…