Southside Elementary Writing Focus examines the process that fostered teacher leadership as a way of strengthening instruction and meeting some of the challenges typical in a school with a high minority student population, high student transiency, and low test scores. After five years, the key components of the initiative remain intact. The seeds…

In the early 1990s, states began establishing standards in academic subjects backed by test-based accountability systems to see that the standards were met. Incentives were implemented for schools and students based on pupil test scores. These early accountability systems paved the way for passage of landmark federal legislation, the No Child Left…

Educators and researchers have suggested that positive relations with their parents would have significant impacts on children's attitudes and behaviours. The present study has two purposes: (a) to examine whether parent-child relations would influence low achievers' liking of school, and (b) to investigate whether low achievers' parent-child…

Kentucky's goal of reaching academic "proficiency" by 2014 illuminated problematic findings in 2002 reading test scores: 44.30% of middle and 71.25% of high school students scored below "proficient." The research question was, "Do teaching practices in schools with high reading achievement scores differ from teaching practices in schools with low…

This research project was designed to develop and test empirically a new integrative model of cognition and to determine whether doing so would shed new light on why African American students continue to perform poorly in U.S. schools. The model is based on an integration of anthropology, psychology, and theology, with the understanding that human…

A key premise of Reading Recovery is that early intervention in first grade is critical in long-term literacy achievement because the gap between lowest- and highest-achieving children is narrow in lower grades but widens in later elementary school. Reading Recovery closes this gap at the critical time in children's literacy learning before the…

An evaluation was conducted to determine how the PLATO Pathways program was used in three high schools in Volusia County, Florida: Deland, New Smyrna Beach, and Atlantic. Of the many PLATO sites in Volusia, these three were selected for study because of the representative patterns of low, medium, and high PLATO use. PLATO is a computer learning…

It is estimated that around 2.4 million students per year were retained in U.S. schools in the late 1990s. Are these children receiving the best educational services to suit their needs? Are there differences between low-achieving students who are not retained and those who are? Researchers and practitioners are asking these and other questions as…

The reasons people most often give for the failures of U.S. schools involve poverty, racial inequality, and a host of social problems. This paper argues that even if all these conditions were remedied, the schools would not produce many more people with the ability to think than they do today. Teachers, who are usually able to think, do not know…

This paper draws on data from a previous study to explore the existence of institutional racism at traditionally all-white institutions and the steps that an institution can take to address the possible hostile environment of a nearly all-white institution. Data on college mathematics and core curriculum achievement from the earlier study showed…

The present study is part of a systematic program evaluation effort. Student teachers at a southern rural public university were asked to generate classroom management strategies in response to hypothetical vignettes depicting underachieving/alienated behavior. The extended responses were coded to identify strategies that student teachers would…

This is a discussion of research in the 'Schooled and Community numeracies focus within the Leverhulme funded Low Educational Achievement in Numeracy Research Programme. The intentions of the research in this focus are to seek explanations for underachievement in numeracy that derive from understandings of mathematics as social. We wanted to…

This study explores the variables included on Kentucky's School Report Card used to report information about individual schools to parents, legislators, educators, community leaders, and educational researchers. Data used for this exploratory, descriptive study were obtained through the Kentucky Department of Education Web site. The study focused…

The experience chart, perceived as a reading instruction method for early primary grade students only, can actually be used on any grade level. There are a plethora of reasons for using experience charts in reading instruction for low achievers among middle school readers, including the following: content is based on background experiences of…

Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) is a program designed to help underachieving students with academic potential prepare for entrance into colleges and universities. An evaluation of the AVID program was conducted to determine program effects. Program participants are primarily from low-income and ethnic minority backgrounds. The base…