The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student…

This study examined the relative contribution of reading comprehension strategies and interactive vocabulary in Improving Comprehension Online (ICON), a universally designed web-based scaffolded text environment designed to improve fifth-grade monolingual English and bilingual students' reading achievement. Seventy-five monolingual English and 31…

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 findings highlighted concerns about reading literacy teaching quality in South African primary schools (Howie et al., 2007). In response, the national Department of Education (DoE, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d) has emphasised instructional practice improvement. However, little…

Lack of progress of children with emotional disturbance (ED) has begun to be documented in longitudinal school-based studies. Variability in these studies may be due to several factors, including widespread differences in academic, behavioral, and social functioning of these children, their special education status, and school contextual factors.…

"Reading First is the most effective federal program in history." So reads the opening line of a report that Alabama superintendent of education Joseph Morton sent to his congressional delegation last June, in which he recounts how the program has raised reading achievement for poor students in his charge. Morton's view is shared by…

Just before the start of school in 2006, the author discovered that boys' scores trailed girls' across every grade and in every racial subgroup at her school. In this article, she describes her efforts to increase boys' participation in her annual reading promotion activity by incorporating an element of competition and tracking weekly reading…

Background/Context: This article addresses which school-level factors contribute to school quality. Previous research has focused on assessing the effects of school-level variables on student-level quality (e.g., achievement). However, the field has been limited in not evaluating the effects of school-level factors directly on measured…

The school involved in the study is a diverse, faith-based, private school located in a large Midwestern city. Within the school, reading skills vary considerably. Typically, decoding and word skills are not widely taught after the third grade. Sixteen Junior High students who underachieve in reading were given additional instruction using the…

Success in Sight focuses on the interrelated parts of an education system. This systemic school improvement intervention is designed to address schools' specific needs while building their capacities to plan, implement, and evaluate school improvement practices. It is intended to help schools, leadership teams, and teachers systemically engage in…

This report focuses on the development of reading proficiency during the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. The span of time between the ages of 15 and 24 is a critical period of development for young people. Once compulsory education is completed, individual decisions about post-secondary education, employment and other life choices…

Using emergent motivation theory, this study analyzes the relationships between high school students' perceptions of their reading skills, task challenge, and personal control over assigned reading activities and their reading engagement (i.e., interest, enjoyment, and concentration) during science instruction. The study also examines how…

This qualitative comparative case study identified factors that distinguish between high and low-performance on reading achievement in elementary rural Appalachian schools. This study determined the most effective instructional reading strategies, as well as other influential factors, implemented by school districts in the rural Appalachia area…

The authors conducted a third-party study of the student achievement effects of Struggling Schools, a user-generated approach to Comprehensive School Reform (CSR). The design was a quasiexperimental, pre-post matched sample (N = 180) with school as unit of analysis, drawing on 3 years of achievement data from standardized external assessments.…

This study examined the effect of a quasi-experimental project on fifth grade English learners' achievement in state-mandated standards-based science and English reading assessment. A total of 166 treatment students and 80 comparison students from four randomized intermediate schools participated in the current project. The intervention consisted…

If teachers knew in advance whether their students are at risk of school failure, they would have the opportunity to supply these students with additional or special instruction. In Luxembourg, the likelihood of failure in school is particularly high. Taking this result into account, this paper deals with the identification of variables of primary…