As part of the "District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act of 2003" Congress mandated evaluation of this first federally funded, private school voucher program in the United States (now called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). This report presents findings from the evaluation on the impacts 2 years after families who…

PCI Education sought scientifically based evidence on the effectiveness of the "PCI Reading Program--Level One" for students with severe disabilities. During the 2007-2008 academic year. Empirical Education conducted a randomized control trial (RCT) in two Florida districts, Brevard and Miami-Dade County Public Schools. For this…

An observational study of reading instruction was conducted in general education, resource, and self-contained classrooms, grades 1-4, in public schools. Participants included students who were deaf or hard of hearing and their reading teachers. Results indicated that time engaged in reading and/or academically responding varied significantly by…

To explore whether different balances of fiction/non-fiction reading and challenge might help explain differences in reading achievement between genders, data on 45,670 pupils who independently read over 3 million books were analysed. Moderate (rather than high or low) levels of challenge were positively associated with achievement gain, but…

The need to address adolescent literacy, with a focus on English Language Learners, has created a growing realization that instructional practices need to change. Two recent studies conducted by the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth and the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Panel on Adolescent English Language…

The assessment of early literacy skills during the kindergarten year can provide useful information about student performance in prereading skills, which are predictors of later reading achievement. This study examined the use of fluency-based prompts of student phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, and oral reading at the end of kindergarten…

Since its inception, the United States has struggled with its responsibility for educating African American students. Its history of denial and discrimination in the education of Black children has created a national crisis in which academic difficulty and school failure is disproportionately high. In an effort to improve the education of African…

The aim of this study is to examine Finnish students' school engagement profiles in the light of the data collected in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in 2003. Even though Finnish students' cognitive achievement has proved excellent in various international assessments, their school engagement has not been flattering. The…

This study determined the effectiveness of Kindergarten Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (K-PALS) for English Learners (ELs). We compared 20 K-PALS ELs to 20 Control ELs and to 20 K-PALS non-ELs on early reading skill acquisition, using a pretest-posttest control group design with matched samples. We also compared proportions of ELs unresponsive…

South Africa's rich multicultural society is reflected by 11 official languages. The Language in Education policy stipulates that children should start learning at school in their home language until Grade 3. In most schools, the language of instruction for all subjects changes in Grade 4 from an indigenous African language to English, which means…

A study explored 97 less proficient fifth graders' use of imagery when given oral prompts to image or general memory directions (control) and when reading explicit or implicit texts. The effects of imagery on story comprehensions and affective responses were measured by immediate and delayed story recalls, cued recall questions, and an open-ended…

A longitudinal study investigated the effects of leisure time reading (reading at home for pleasure or fun) on pupils' reading achievement in school. Subjects, 736 students in grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 in 30 schools located throughout the Netherlands, had their reading achievement determined five times: at the beginning and end of grade 3 and at the…

This 1993 report is the second issue of the "State of the State--Education Performance in North Carolina," which monitors the health of North Carolina's education system as a whole and compares it to national and regional performance data. The first two sections define characteristics of North Carolina and its schools. Information about…

This edition of "NAEPFacts" highlights findings from the first attempt by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to measure elementary students' oral reading on a large scale. This article presents data on 1,136 fourth graders' oral fluency and its relationship to 3 other aspects of reading ability: comprehension,…

This booklet presents the Reading Framework for the 1992 and 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which contains the rationale for the aspects of reading assessed and the criteria for the development of the assessment. The booklet notes that the new reading assessment examines students' abilities to construct, extend, and…