School district--university research collaborations represent one strategy to increase educators' ability to use current, research-based information in program decision making and efforts to improve student achievement. However, differences in organizational structures, goals, values, and prior collaborative experiences have made successful…

Although spelling skill progress has typically been studied within the context of students' responses to written story starters (Deno, Marsten, & Mirkin, 1982; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2011; Hosp, Hosp, & Howell, 2007; Shinn & Shinn, 2002), there has been little research conducted within a curriculum-based measurement framework that has…

The Scylla and Charybdis in this discussion of teacher evaluation are standardized achievement test data on the one hand, and classroom observational systems on the other. These are the two most common methods used to judge teachers' competency. Both have serious flaws: the former primarily with validity, the latter primarily with reliability. At…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how regular and special education teachers prepare elementary school students with disabilities to take the statewide test, The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), by using electronic resources. The PARCC was introduced in 2014 to replace the paper and pencil statewide…

There is an extensive body of research establishing measures of oral reading fluency as valid and reliable predictors of important reading outcomes and performance on high stakes tests (Good, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 2001). The present study was conducted to determine whether these findings also apply to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test…

Nearly two dozen states now administer online exams. These tests have real consequences: their results feed into accountability systems, which have been used for more than a decade to hold schools and districts accountable for their students' learning. We examine the rollout of computer-based testing in Massachusetts over 2 years to investigate…

Students living in poverty are now the majority of the K-12 student population in the United States. Growing up in poverty results in lower self-regulation, executive function, and readiness to learn. Researchers suggest that mindfulness practices, such as yoga, can enhance student self-regulation and executive function, thereby increasing student…

In an analysis of 3,100 students entering ninth grade in Denver, this report identified 1,000 "super travelers," students willing to travel farther or past more schools to get to their first-choice high school. Super travelers' first-choice schools had better academic outcomes, fewer disciplinary incidents, and more advanced courses and…

HIPPY [Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters] was designed to assist parents from disadvantaged backgrounds with educational opportunities to prepare their children for school. HIPPY targeted children in 70 Houston Independent School District (HISD) elementary schools during the 2017-2018 academic year. This figure reflects an…

This document describes the features of a statewide summative science assessment that has been designed to embody standards based on the "Framework for K-12 Science Education," such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)--to reflect its intent, grounded in the specific expectations of three-dimensional standards. Importantly,…

Classroom discussion, despite its association with good academic outcomes, is exceedingly rare in U.S. schools. The Word Generation intervention involves the provision of texts and activities to be implemented across content area class, organized around engaging and discussable dilemmas. The program was evaluated with 1,554 middle grade students…

This study examines the psychometric properties of two assessments of children's approaches to learning: the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) and a 13-item approaches to learning rating scale (AtL) derived from the Arizona Early Learning Standards (AELS). First, we administered questionnaires to 1,145 randomly selected parents/guardians…

Many Latino children in the U.S. speak primarily Spanish at home with few opportunities for exposure to English before entering school. For monolingual children, the strongest early predictor of later school success is oral language skill developed before kindergarten. Less is known about how early oral language skills support later learning in…

Inference skill is one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension. Still, there is little rigorous research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension. There is no research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension for English learners with reading comprehension…

The present study examined the longitudinal associations among birth weight status, maternal warmth, and children's cognitive competence within an at-risk sample (N = 1809) drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. Of particular interest was whether birth weight moderated the associations between maternal warmth and indicators of…