Literacy leaders in the classroom are often in a position to observe student characteristics and needs that accountability measures cannot detect. When students with obvious needs can still pass state tests, they can often be dubbed "proficient readers". It will take a particularly insightful teacher, with a clear view of what reading…

Using National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) data, researchers examined the reading growth rates of secondary students who had been retained between kindergarten and 8th grade and those of a matched comparison group of students who had never been retained (n = 878 in each group). Descriptive statistics and latent growth models revealed that…

It has been reported in the literature that the disparities of student achievement within schools are often larger than the disparity across schools. In the secondary school context, analysing student achievement data at department level enables a fine-grained approach to identifying particular departments and teachers within them that are…

The transition into school occurs at the intersection of multiple environmental settings. This study applied growth curve modeling to a sample of 1,364 American children, followed from birth through age 6, who had been categorized by their exposure to cognitive stimulation at home and in preschool child care and 1st-grade classrooms. Of special…

In the previous article in this series, the authors provided a rationale for integrating academic and behavior response to intervention (RTI) systems. Their rationale included: (1) research showing that challenges in academic and social behavior are linked; (2) a description of the common features that both RTI systems share; and (3) the…

There are hundreds of tutoring programs that utilize community volunteers being implemented across the country; however, there are few rigorous efforts to evaluate their effectiveness. This article presents findings on reading achievement from an evaluation of the New York City Experience Corps[R], a program that uses older volunteers to work with…

Duncan et al. (2007) presented a new methodology for identifying kindergarten readiness factors and quantifying their importance by determining which of children's developing skills measured around kindergarten entrance would predict later reading and math achievement. This article extends Duncan et al.'s work to identify kindergarten readiness…

This manuscript focuses on neuroscience research that may have applicability for early childhood educators. Beginning with cautions about the usefulness of neurosciences, we offer reviews of several ideas that can inform the practice of early childhood educators. We begin with the understanding that reading is not innate, meaning that every brain…

Readers' beliefs about their understanding and test performance as a function of the reading purpose was examined. Participants read a series of expository texts for entertainment or study purposes, answered questions about the texts, and their beliefs about future and past test performance were assessed. The results showed that students believed…

The aim of the present longitudinal study was to investigate factors contributing to mothers' and fathers' teaching of reading and mathematics to their children during kindergarten and Grade 1. It was assumed that mothers' and fathers' teaching during kindergarten would be influenced by their socioeconomic status and their own learning…

Christine Garbe, a professor at the Institute for German Language and Literature Education at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany, initially focused her research on youth's socialization as readers. Her professional textbooks in this area are innovative. International comparisons of youth's reading achievement drew her attention to…

The purpose of this article is to discuss curriculum-based measurement (CBM) as it is currently utilized in research and practice and to propose a new approach for developing measures to monitor the academic progress of students longitudinally. To accomplish this, we first describe CBM and provide several exemplars of CBM in reading and…

Achievement gaps between immigrant and native students indicate failure to assure educational equity in the majority of countries assessed by the Programme for International Student Assessment in 2009 (PISA, 2009). The present article explains disparate achievement results in Europe, first testing the hypothesis of old and new democracies. In…

At some point in their child's education, many parents have considered whether it would be worth the expense to enrol their child in a private school. For parents, private schools may offer a particular kind of instruction that is not available in public schools. If private schools also attract higher-performing students and better teachers than…

Using quantile regression analyses, this study examines gender gaps in mathematics, science, and reading in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Jordan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Qatar, Tunisia, and Turkey among 15 year-old students. The analyses show that girls in Azerbaijan achieve as well as boys in mathematics and science and overachieve in reading. In Jordan,…