Pacific Resources for Education and Learning has embarked on a journey to build literacy-focused high-performing learning communities--defining high-performing learning communities as organizations that have: shared vision; challenging curriculum aligned to instruction and assessment measures; a culture of continuous learning and improvement;…

This paper is a study of the Success for All (SFA) reading program in a New York City elementary school. In particular, the study investigates if SFA has been implemented as advocated by its developers. The study investigates whether SFA's designers achieved their goals, provides a critical analysis of the program, and conducts a survey of…

A study was conducted in response to a request from the Illinois State Board of Education to examine closely which reading programs work best for Illinois students and schools. In some Illinois schools, students exhibit consistently high levels of reading achievement--the teaching, learning, and other practices of these schools may point the way…

Noting that language arts and reading across the curriculum are in vogue, this paper asserts that reading is an important and distinct part of the language arts and overall school curriculum. It discusses actions and methods involved in the teaching of reading itself, including: (1) oral reading to and by students; (2) availability of a variety of…

To determine quality sequence in pupil progress, evaluation approaches need to be used which guide the teacher to assist learners to attain optimally. Teachers must use a variety of procedures to appraise student achievement in reading, because no one approach is adequate. Appraisal approaches might include: (1) observation and subsequent…

This study assessed the effects of participating in Florida's Prekindergarten Early Intervention Program (PKEI) on fourth grade mathematics and reading standardized norm-referenced test scores and the incidence of retention. PKEI serves mostly 4-year-old children from families whose income falls below the federal poverty level. Study subjects were…

This report contains 11 recommendations and a call to action designed to ensure that every child in Idaho is able to read at the appropriate level by the end of third grade. It was requested by the 1997 Idaho Legislature, which acknowledged that reading is fundamental to a student's ability to achieve his or her full potential. The research…

Reading for students beyond the primary and lower elementary grades gets relatively little attention. Despite the widespread acceptance of the importance of higher levels of literacy for students, levels that can only be achieved across the years of elementary and secondary school, most educators, researchers, and policymakers focus their…

This report summarizes the data obtained through the administration of the Observation Survey (M. Clay) as part of the K-2 Student Assessment Portfolio of the Durham Public Schools, North Carolina, during the second year of data collection. The database contained a total of 7,752 students in kindergarten through grade 2. The Observation Survey…

Frustrated by the repeated delays in the release of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Charter School Report and knowing that the data were collected in 2003, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) decided to try to unearth the basic NAEP charter school results. Embedded in the questionnaire that was administered to schools…

This document looks at the performance of Illinois schools. The positives include: (1) more schools are meeting tough No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements; and (2) math scores in all grades have improved significantly over the past five years. However, there continues to be room for improvement, including: (1) improving reading at all grade…

Embedded multimedia refers to teaching methods that embed video or DVD content within teachers' lessons. The research of Mayer (2001) and others has suggested that multimedia instruction can enhance learning by using the capacity of both visual and verbal memory systems. The present study evaluated embedded multimedia in a year-long randomized…

The present research was conducted to explore, further, possible effects of sex of teacher on student reading performance. (Author)

Hemifield differences in the recognition of briefly presented words were investigated in children ranging in grade level from second grade through college. (Editor)