This study assessed if students with and without disabilities used calculators (fourfunction, scientific, or graphing) to solve mathematics assessment problems and whether using calculators improved their performance. Participants were sixth and seventh-grade students educated with either National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded or traditional…

This essay explores the role that storytelling might play in the professional learning of English teachers. It begins by reflecting on the ways that stories shape our everyday lives, and then considers how the meaning-making potential of storytelling might enable us to gain insights into our work as educators. This is in contradistinction to the…

Over the past 30 years, accountability policies have become more prominent in public K-12 education and have changed how teaching and learning are organized. It is less clear the extent to which these policies have altered the politics of education. This article begins to address that question through the lens of policy feedback. It identifies…

The Problem: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not there were any statistically significant differences in the Mathematics California Standard Test scores and attendance rates for African American and Latina high school girls who participated in an afterschool program. Method: A quasi-experimental design was conducted with…

Limited studies have been conducted on the relationship between scheduling formats and academic performance of high school students. At the target high school, students underperform on standardized tests in English language arts (ELA) and math. The purpose of this causal comparative quantitative study was to compare the means of ELA and math test…

The present study was designed to explore the association between preschool academic skills and Grade 3 achievement among a sample of ethnically diverse children from low-income families. Data were collected from a sample of 1,442 low-income, ethnically diverse children in preschool and associated with Grade 3 achievement in reading and…

The use of standardized test results to drive school administrator evaluations pervades education policymaking in more than 40 states. However, the results of state standardized tests are strongly influenced by non-school factors. The models of best fit (n = 18) from this correlational, explanatory, longitudinal study predicted accurately the…

As the educational community continues to consider the impact of the proliferation of accountability-aimed reform on students, schools, and communities, the consequences of said reforms on teachers must be included. Results of this study indicate that even distant, broad educational policies manifest in specific and profound ways in teachers'…

"Exploring Texas's Private Education Sector" is the eighth entry in the "School Survey Series." This brief synthesizes information about Texas's accredited private schools from a first-of-its-kind survey about these types of choice programs and more to Texas's private K-12 schools in collaboration with the Texas Catholic…

Many postsecondary institutions, and community colleges in particular, require that students demonstrate specified levels of literacy and numeracy before taking college-level courses. Typically, students have been assessed using two widely available tests--ACCUPLACER and Compass. However, placement testing practice is beginning to change for three…

This report looks at student growth in Arkansas school districts disaggregated by district poverty and by the district's value-added performance relative to other districts. We estimated district value-added performance statistics by subject and grade level (8 and 11-12) for longitudinal student cohorts, using statistical models that adjusted for…

New York mayor Bill de Blasio entered office in January 2014, promising to "take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities … [and] put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love." The Manhattan Institute's "Poverty and Progress in New York" series tracks the effects of Mayor de Blasio's…

The Texas Education Code (§ 29.051) requires school districts to provide every language minority student with the opportunity to participate in either a bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) program. This evaluation report summarizes the performance of students who participated in the district's Dual Language Bilingual Program. Included…

The Mississippi Teacher Corps (MTC) was founded in 1989. Over the past 23 years more than 500 MTC participants have taught in critical-needs schools in Mississippi. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Mississippi Teacher Corps teachers as compared to non-Mississippi Teacher Corps teachers. The method of research was a…

Standardized testing time often creates a nervous atmosphere in classrooms. In past years one of the authors joined a chorus of teachers singing her own woes about the infamous test. She increased her daily caffeine intake, lost sleep, and became a nervous, crazed teacher who had turned her classroom into a test prep center. Her aha moment came…