Over the past 7 years the debate on educational policy in Germany has been greatly influenced by major empirical studies of educational performance in the tradition of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), notably the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme for…

Today's instructional leaders face disparate accountabilities. On the one hand, they are accountable for use of research on literacy education that has evolved to be understood as holistic literacy instruction based on an integrated use of semantic, syntactic, and phonemic strategies. On the other hand, leaders must meet requirements of current…

Since the significant report "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading" (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson 1985), more attention has been given to the need to motivate and encourage reading in addition to teaching reading skills. That report concluded that the best predictor of reading comprehension, vocabulary…

The study examines the reading attitudes and attainment of Hong Kong, Singapore and English primary-school students using data collected in the PIRLS 2001 international reading survey. A total of 13,486 students aged 9-10 years were assessed. Singaporean students were found to have more positive reading attitudes and confidence than Hong Kong and…

Little is known about the feasibility and rapidity with which the academic learning of students who enter high school multiple years behind grade level can be accelerated. This study uses multiple regression analyses of standardized test and survey data from high-poverty high schools in two large urban districts to evaluate initial effects of the…

Researchers randomly selected Pennsylvania public middle level schools to identify significant relationships between principals' instructional leadership behaviors and student achievement, with school socioeconomic status (SES) as a secondary variable of interest. For each participant school, four teachers and the principal were asked to complete…

To help inform policymakers and the public about the progress of education in the United States, Congress has mandated that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) produce an annual report, "The Condition of Education." This year's report presents 42 indicators on important topics and trends in U.S. education. These…

As part of compliance with with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, this document presents the State Report Card of Arizona for 2009-2010. The report card provides tables relating to percentage of students who passed AIMS in Arizona by subject and grade. The tables shown in this document include: (1) Mathematics Grade 3; (2) Reading Grade 3; (3)…

This meta-analysis offers decision-makers research-based guidance for intervening with adolescent struggling readers. The authors outline major implications for practice: (1) Adolescence is not too late to intervene. Interventions do benefit older students; (2) Older students with reading difficulties benefit from interventions focused at both the…

Researchers have disagreed about the extent to which differences in achievement based on socioeconomic status (SES) accumulate during the school year as compared to the summer, and the literature has not fully assessed the contributions of social contexts--in the form of both school and neighborhood poverty concentration and racial and ethnic…

Private schooling in the third world is on the increase and in particular in one of the low-income areas of India, where a data analysis on Hyderabad has been carried out. The University of Newcastle has conducted an initiative research in Hyderabad on the impact on pupils' progress in Reading and Spelling tests. This initiative was called…

The Newark Public Schools (NPS) has been at the center of reform and improvement efforts in New Jersey for the better part of 12 years. The results of these efforts are both significant and frustrating. The school district has made substantial progress over the last few years; but it also has a long way to go before it attains the level of…

This study evaluated (1) whether essay placement (either at the beginning or at the end of the test battery) impacts test-takers' performance on the critical reading, mathematics, and writing multiple choice measures; and (2) whether essay prompt type (either a simple one-line prompt or a prompt including a short passage) affects test-takers'…

How welcome parents and carers feel at their children's school seems likely to have a significant influence on the degree to which they and their children engage with its educational programme. The ethos of the school and the nature of the classroom environment as determined by teachers are therefore significant and continuing features of its…

This article recounts the battle in the "math wars" that took place in Massachusetts, United States in 1999-2000 over the scope, content and teaching of the state's K-12 mathematics curriculum. Harsh controversies arose between the partisans of a "reform-math" movement stressing an undefined "conceptual understanding"…