Targeted school funding is a potentially valuable policy lever to increase educational equality by race, ethnicity, and income, but it remains unclear how to target funds most effectively. We use a regression discontinuity approach to compare districts that narrowly passed or failed a school funding election. We use close tax elections in 9 states…

A-F school letter grade systems, currently used in 13 states across the United States (U.S.), are one popular version of the systems required by federal policy to help states define, rate, and label school quality every year. In this study, we explored the extent to which such grades assigned to schools, as based on objective measures including…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental quantitative study was to determine whether the supplemental phonics program, Fundations, improved reading skills over time. Ehri's theory of orthographic mapping served as the theoretical framework for this study. Archival data from 254 second grade students who did, or did not, participate in the…

For years, educational practitioners and decision-makers have encouraged teachers to implement a balanced literacy approach in class. However, the effects of balanced literacy on the reading comprehension of students from different backgrounds have not been carefully examined in the current literature. Using the large data sets from the 2016…

Classroom Response System (CRS) is a promising educational tool that can create an interactive learning space. In high school, less is known about its impact on learning mathematics. Most studies on the integration of CRS in teaching and learning use internet-dependent tool. This paper aimed to determine the effectiveness of the CRS that uses…

The importance of family background in determining a student's academic achievement has long been acknowledged by researchers. Nonetheless, the effect of schooling on this relationship has also been widely investigated. Some studies have shown that family background plays a far stronger role while the effect of schooling is minimal; others have…

This cohort-sequential study explored the working memory (WM) structures that underlie growth in mathematical word problem solving (WPS) performance in elementary school emergent bilingual children whose first language (L1) is Spanish. To this end, children (N = 429) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 in southwest U.S. school districts at Wave 1 were…

How prepared are students for life-long learning? Students learn many things at school, but one of the most crucial is learning how to learn. For students to continue learning independently beyond the classroom, three key aspects are essential: understanding effective learning strategies, staying motivated to learn, and having confidence in their…

The problem of practice being explored in this work was first identified at a suburban middle school in Massachusetts, where the assessment scores of students with learning disabilities were significantly lower than those of peers not on Individualized Education Plans. The collaboration between general education science teachers and special…

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand how Black middle school students interpret the relationship with their mathematics teachers. This study is situated within research exploring the nuances of the Black-White achievement gap. National assessment data provide that more than 80% of eighth-grade Black students enter high school working…

Background: In the past decades, there has been a growing concern to understand why boys struggle in school. One of the turning points in students' educational trajectories likely to exacerbate boys' academic difficulties is students' enrolment in private or enriched school programmes, as boys are underrepresented in such programmes. Method: To…

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students and show that differences in TVA explain an important part of the gender gaps we observe in test scores and postsecondary…

The vision for the Leadership Richland One MSAP project was that all students will have the opportunity to succeed academically through a high-quality education in an environment characterized by diverse social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. To improve student achievement, major project goals and objectives focus on four areas:…

In response to declining results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, the then governing Swedish coalition in 2010-2014 introduced earlier grading, more extensive national testing and a new standards-based curriculum. These reforms coincided with a greater emphasis on inclusive' education understood in the 'narrow'…

It is important to understand the nature of the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic had upon student learning, especially those at risk such as deaf students. The limited communication that many deaf students have at home may mean less support is available for learning remotely. Reading may be one of the areas where progress was diminished. We…