In an age of increased accountability and high-stakes testing, educators continuously seek to locate quality reading intervention curricula intended to improve students' reading performances. Yet, the basics-first emphasis commonly associated with reading intervention curricula may result in districts assigning reading intervention that helps…

The primary purpose of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC®) is to measure the everyday English skills of individuals, who speak a first language other than English, working in an international environment (ETS, 2015a, 2016a; Powers & Powers, 2015). The TOEIC also has six secondary purposes: (1) to verify the current…

Due to the Common Core State Standards, close reading is becoming a common practice in today's elementary and middle school classrooms. Qualitative content analysis of journal publications was used to determine the (a) prevalence of close reading in the existing literature, (b) knowledge about close reading from the research literature, (c) themes…

Although there is growing understanding of beginning secondary science teacher learning and development in the United States, little is known about their learning experiences at professional development (PD) conferences. To increase knowledge in this area, this study investigated the experiences of 68 beginning secondary science teachers at a…

After bringing hidden inequities to light, a high-performing school district set out to reverse course. The district adopted two key practices to center issues of equity: the development of a district-specific metric, the Opportunity Index, and deep analysis of deceleration patterns in course taking among certain groups. These practices, alongside…

The discrepancy in the empirical literature surrounding distance education (DE) coursetaking among community college students has led to the online paradox, where short-term or more proximal academic outcomes associated with DE coursetaking are negative, but the long-term or distal academic outcomes are positive. Importantly, no previous study has…

Ex-offenders have a variety of characteristics that limit their employment potential, including convictions affecting work opportunities, substance abuse challenges, limited work experiences, insufficient education and cognitive skills, and perceptions the public has about prisoners. The primary purpose for this research is to learn more about the…

This paper focuses on the potential of competency assessment to support the long-term growth of the labour market by facilitating the appropriate employment of skilled immigrants. A competency-informed approach involves looking holistically at an individual's ability to apply knowledge and skills with appropriate judgment in a defined setting. The…

In "Where Teachers Thrive," Susan Moore Johnson outlines a powerful argument about the importance of the school as an organization in nurturing high-quality teaching. Based on case studies conducted in fourteen high-poverty, urban schools, the book examines why some schools failed to make progress, while others achieved remarkable…

The hiring of faculty is at the heart of developing and maintaining programs, as well as the success and achievement of students, in all educational systems, and the California Community College System is no exception. While hiring practices may vary in terms of specifics in the 72 community college districts in California, basic principles and…

Tennessee was one of the 10 states selected to participate in New Skills for Youth (NSFY). NSFY, launched by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2016, is a $75 million, five-year initiative, aimed at strengthening and expanding high-quality career pathways for youth. As part of this initiative, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Advance CTE and…

Why do some students learn more in some schools than others? One consideration receiving growing attention is school management. To study this, researchers need to be able to measure school management accurately and cheaply at scale, and also explain any observed relationship between school management and student learning. This paper introduces a…

Problem Statement: Physical therapist (PT) students report discord between what they learn in the academic environment and what they experience in clinical practice. Despite increasing reporting requirements, standardized tests and measures (STMs) are not well integrated into routine clinical practice. The primary purposes of this study were to:…

Textbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. We use a lens of institutional theory and interviews with district leaders in a stratified…

While engaged in academic reading, a college provost converged on an idea to use a preferential approach to students' selection of college courses, similar to the recommendation ideas based on Netflix and Amazon. The result of this idea came to be known as Degree Compass and was implemented on the campus of Austin Peay State University in 2011.…