This study compared students' performance on Istation, a computer-based progress-monitoring tool, and easyCBM, a paper-pencil progress-monitoring tool. Participants included 106 students in Grades K-6 from a rural school in New Mexico. Teachers in these grade levels administered both assessments three times during the school year. Results…

Academic achievement and absenteeism are two areas that schools are held accountable. Helping families and communities understand the correlation between achievement and attendance is an essential part of improving attendance. The purpose of this research study was to compare student attendance and academic achievement on the CASE Benchmark exams…

Teachers' implementation of differentiated supplemental instruction is critical to help students with or at risk for reading-related disabilities acquire early reading and vocabulary skills. This study represents an initial investigation of whether classroom teachers' intervention fidelity (exposure, adherence, and quality) of targeted reading…

The authors examined the associations between observed classroom management and teacher-child relationships with individual children during kindergarten and Grade 1. We used a sample of nonstruggling and struggling readers and their teachers in rural schools in the Southeastern United States to examine whether gender and struggling reader status…

This study investigated the reliability and validity of Part 1 of the Informal Decoding Inventory (IDI), a free diagnostic assessment used to plan Tier 2 intervention for first graders with decoding deficits. Part 1 addresses single-syllable words and consists of five subtests that progress in difficulty and that contain real word and pseudoword…

Two studies using similar methods in two states investigated the long-term predictive utility of two single-skill early numeracy Curriculum Based Measures (CBMs) and the degree to which they can adequately predict high-stakes test scores. Data were drawn from kindergarten and first-grade students. State standardized assessment data from the…

A study was conducted to measure possible sex differences in phonological awareness and reading ability among children in early primary school. A subset of the "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" (DIBELS) was administered to 140 children in kindergarten through to second grade (mean ages five to seven years). Independent…

This longitudinal study examined the extent to which teachers' participation in a 3-year professional development program enhanced their self-efficacy and prompted changes in science instruction in the early elementary grades. The study used a mixed-methods design, and included 39 teachers who taught in kindergarten, first grade, or second…

This study examined relationships between specific data on students referred for and placed in the exceptional children's program. The context is a rural North Carolina county and included 206 records of K-6th graders spanning academic years 2007-08, 08-09 and 09-10. The kindergarten entrance ages of students were divided into categories of on…

School districts in the U.S. are mandated to identify young children with disabilities. Developmental screeners are typically used to screen for such skill deficits. Academic tests are used in older students. A significant challenge is identifying children with potential learning disabilities early in their school career. This study identifies a…

Albert Bandura, the leading pioneer in the study of self-regulation, has defined the term as the child's ability to self-educate, self-direct, regulate motivation, and learn to think about what she is learning (1994). Lev Vygotsky's theory that children can be taught to think independently about how to solve problems expands upon Bandura's work…

This study utilized early reading assessment data from a randomized trial of 210 urban and rural schools in Texas to examine contextual effects on risk prediction in first and second grade. The primary objective was to examine the roles of (a) individual differences, (b) the grade 1 classroom, and (c) the pairing of first and second grade teachers…