This study examined effects of goal setting, frequency of progress monitoring, and method of evaluating progress on the number of instructional change prompts generated by reading-curriculum-based measurements (CBM). Participants were 31 high-incidence special education students in grades 2-6 selected from 8 schools. Following baseline…

Background/Context: One important question to educational research is whether teachers can influence student achievement over time. This question is related to the durability of teacher effects on student achievement in successive grades. The research evidence about teacher effects on student achievement has been somewhat mixed. Some education…

In this article, the authors propose a revised way of thinking about reading levels, one that promotes a wider and more flexible view of teacher decision making about the use of leveled texts in classrooms. They share five key principles to consider when looking at the use of instruction that involves matching leveled materials with readers.…

Expressions of delight and anticipation are a direct result of a schoolwide writing program designed by teachers to develop language skills in special education students. These second graders participated in a writing project that made use of wikis to facilitate collaboration among the students, parents, teachers, and university members of their…

This article arises from research in one school district (utilizing the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education, VAL-ED) into the relationships among the perceptions of elementary school leaders of their learning-centered leadership, and student achievement on state-mandated tests of reading in Virginia. Beyond the percentage of students…

Purpose: School effectiveness and instructional leadership research over the past 30 years has largely concluded that principal effects on student achievement are small and indirect. It has been assumed that the principal effect is important but mediated through other school factors. Findings: This experimental study found that one-on-one…

Background/context: The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the only comparative assessment of academic competencies regularly administered to nationally representative samples of students enrolled in Grades 4, 8, and 12. Because NAEP is a low-stakes assessment, there are long-standing questions about the level of engagement and…

This study examined academic differences between students who attended 21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) programs frequently (60 or more days) and matched nonattendees during the 2008-2009 school year. Schools included in the study represented only those centers found to be implementing high-quality programming, as measured by a…

This article uses a Bernsteinian approach to explore, examine, and theorize about an activity in the upper-secondary curriculum within the Swedish Language subject. Based on an examination of the interplay between different educational actors in this recontextualization process the possibilities for pupils with different social backgrounds and…

Rural and suburban children account for the majority of poor children in the United States. Yet, most research examining poverty's associations with child development is focused on urban samples. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (N ˜ 6,600), this study examines whether the form and…

This study looked at the effect of both quantity and quality of computer use on achievement. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 student survey comprising of 4,356 students (boys, n = 2,129; girls, n = 2,227) was used to predict academic achievement from quantity and quality of computer use while controlling for…

Gervais High School--with a senior class of 80 and a total enrollment of 337--may be small in size compared to its neighbors, but it has demonstrated over the last four years the ability to think big in pursuit of excellence. A decade ago, Gervais had a well-earned reputation in Oregon's Willamette Valley as a drug-ridden, gang-infested school…

Background: Cluster-randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

Analyses examined academic achievement data across third through eighth grades ("N" = 26,474), comparing students identified as homeless or highly mobile (HHM) with other students in the federal free meal program (FM), reduced price meals (RM), or neither (General). Achievement was lower as a function of rising risk status (General…

This exploratory study examined the influences of student, teacher, and setting characteristics on kindergarteners' early reading outcomes and investigated whether those relations were moderated by type of intervention. Participants included 206 kindergarteners identified as at risk for reading difficulties and randomly assigned to one of two…