Identifying creatively gifted students remains a challenging yet important task. Often, teacher rating scales are used to assess students' creative behaviors; however, the school environment may not always provide opportunities for students to demonstrate creative ability, making it challenging for teachers to observe students' creative potential.…

In a Southern state at a rural high school, leadership staff implemented phonics-based strategies with 9th grade English teachers to improve students' Lexile reading scores. The absence of formative data related to program implementation left stakeholders without a clear understanding of the influence of the phonics-based strategies. The purpose…

Despite the prevalence of educational apps for children, there is little evidence of their effectiveness for learning. Here, children were asked to learn ten new words in a narrative mobile game that requires children use knowledge of word meanings to advance the game. Study 1 used a lab-based between-subjects design with middle-SES 4-year-olds…

In order to provide equitable opportunities and equal access to an effective, personalized education, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) offers Apex Learning, a district-funded virtual platform with online instructional course options, to all students in grades 7-12. The purpose of this report is to provide district leaders with data…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental quantitative study was to determine if the incorporation of a student response system in third grade mathematics led to an increase in student achievement as measured by the MAP Growth: Math 2-5 CCSS 2010 V2 interim assessment. The study was founded on the basis that providing students with educational…

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that impact the job satisfaction and retention of teachers at a rural high school in South Carolina. An electronic survey was given to 22 teachers in order to collect information on job satisfaction and teacher retention. Several factors were identified that impact job satisfaction and teachers…

This paper explores treatment effects in three different contexts: an extended school year pilot program in an urban school district, a library summer reading program serving twenty-one urban school districts, and states passing the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s and 1980s. Estimates generated using two years of intervention data along…

Inclusive science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) high schools, such as T-STEM Academies, are intended to broaden STEM opportunities by enrolling interested students from diverse backgrounds without imposing aptitude or prior achievement requirements and giving all their students STEM courses and real-world experiences to inspire and…

There are approximately 200,000 students in Houston Independent School District (HISD), and many of them are recent immigrants who have been in the United States for three years or less. "Immigrant" children or youth, as defined under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and later the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA),…

This study is part of a larger effort to investigate linguistic features of assessment items that might explain differential performance of English learners on science assessments. An analysis of a large set of multiple-choice items suggested two features that held promise in reducing the performance gap: the presence of contrast words and the…

The purpose of this study was to assess whether intervention with an integrated focus on fraction and decimal magnitude provides added value in improving rational number performance over intervention focused exclusively on fractions. We randomly assigned 4th graders with poor whole-number performance to 3 conditions: a business-as-usual control…

This study examines whether learners' (high vs. low) 'ideal L2 self' exerts an effect on causal attributions and which of these causal attributions could predict future L2 achievement. To this end, 1006 EFL students were invited from a state university in Ankara, Turkey. The data were collected with an attribution scale composed of 29 questions…

The academic achievement gap is a persistent and pernicious educational challenge confounded with race and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap persists despite over three decades of interventions and federal, state, and local policies and initiatives meant to close it. We examine the achievement gap in one of the most diverse states in the…

With more rigorous standards and testing at the forefront of educational reform across the nation, the rural school district in this study developed a strategic compensation plan with bonus pay based on student test scores as a teacher success incentive. A causal-comparative study was conducted to examine the effect of teacher merit pay levels on…

This paper investigates the perception of phonotactics by Saudi English majors, beginners and advanced. Due to the significance of pronunciation of consonant clusters, which are almost absent from Arabic, this work attempts to find the extent to which beginner and advanced English majors accept or reject permissible and impermissible sounds…