The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if a difference exists between male and female superintendents in rural Texas elementary schools in terms of student academic achievement measured through performance on the 3rd grade State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. The study engages one research question for…

The present study employed regression analyses to examine the influence of cognitive competencies (decoding ability, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge) and intrinsic motivation (curiosity and involvement) on the comprehension of narrative and informational texts. Participants included 104 students in grades four and five. Results showed…

Children with reading difficulty experience stress in school that may put them at risk of negative socio-emotional adjustment involving externalizing or internalizing patterns. It is unclear what factors influence some children to experience externalizing patterns and others internalizing patterns. This study investigated the influences of the age…

Little research has been conducted on Arabic letter knowledge. This study investigates the nature of Arabic letter knowledge, its dimensionality, and the relative difficulty of letter knowledge items, all within an item response theory (IRT) framework. Three letter knowledge tests were administered to 142 native Arabic-speaking kindergarteners…

These are the appendixes for the report, "Trends and Gaps in Reading Achievement across Kindergarten and Grade 1 in Two Illinois School Districts." This study examined reading achievement data for kindergarten and grade 1 students in two districts in Illinois: District U-46 (Elgin Area Schools) and District 186 (Springfield Public…

Reading comprehension assessments often vary from one measure to another related to the response format required, passage length and other variables. Yet, these measures purport to assess the same skill of reading comprehension, and they are often used interchangeably. Over the last decade some reading researchers have raised concerns that the…

The purpose of this study is to determine how different public-school teachers and staff perceive school climate at an achieving public middle school. The research sought to find relationships between teacher sub-groups and other staff members, and how they perceived the school climate, either negatively or positively. The researcher believed that…

This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of learning the Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) 1 reading course through the Udemy platform and assess the learner's satisfaction with learning the Chinese course on the Udemy platform. The participants were 30 zero-foundation learners with minimal exposure to basic Chinese expressions and were randomly…

This study addressed the effects of Strategies for Teaching Reading, Information, and Vocabulary Effectively (STRIVE), a distributed professional development (PD) model designed to help teachers implement reading comprehension and vocabulary practices in fourth grade social studies classes. Schools (n = 81 schools, n = 235 teachers, n = 4,757…

The United States faces substantial cultural, political, and military challenges, yet remains hampered by a severely underperforming and costly system of K-12 education. Far from an unhappy accident, American school districts behave broadly as their major interest groups desire, and the demand for non-district K-12 options continues to greatly…

Typical print formatting provides no information regarding the linguistic features of a text, although texts vary considerably with respect to grammatical complexity and readability. Complex texts may be particularly challenging for individuals with weak language knowledge, such as English language learners. This paper investigates the usefulness…

This study examined the factors influencing reading achievement based on the results of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021 (PIRLS 2021). Comparative studies exclusively targeting the Asian region are scarce. Many previous studies neglect the joint effect of multiple factors. To highlight the holistic understanding of complex…

Early identification of students needing additional support is a foundational component of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Due to the resource-intensive nature of implementing MTSS, it is critical that universal screening procedures are maximally accurate and efficient. The purpose of this study was to compare the classification accuracy…

The purpose of this study was to examine: (1) the effect of a reading intervention based on reading need compared to a mismatched behavior intervention; and (2) the effect of an academic behavior intervention based on behavior need in comparison to a mismatched reading intervention. Six students took part in the multiple baseline study. Half of…

Purpose: Fourth grade typically involves shifting the instruction from "learning to read" to "reading to learn," which can cause students to struggle. However, early reading intervention guided by assessment has demonstrated effectiveness in preventing later reading difficulties (RD). This study presents a classification and…