The purpose of this longitudinal study was to critically evaluate the updated Turkish reading curricula to determine whether they enable teachers to design instructional sequences that are highly cognitively demanding. This study was designed as a qualitative inquiry using document analysis to estimate the pedagogically oriented intellectual…

Growing evidence suggests that contrary to popular belief, schools mostly do not generate achievement gaps in cognitive skills but, rather, reflect the inequalities that already exist. In the case of socioeconomic status, exposure to school often reduces gaps. Surprisingly little is known, however, about whether this pattern extends to gender gaps…

This study examines associations between leisure reading and reading skills in data of 2,525 students followed from age 7 to 16. As a step further from traditional cross-lagged analysis, a random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used to identify within-person associations of leisure reading (books, magazines, newspapers, and digital…

Over 18 million children in Ethiopia are enrolled at the primary level with a net enrollment rate of 100 percent. Unfortunately, the positive achievement of getting more children into school has strained the capacity of the system, and student learning has suffered. USAID's 2018 Early Grade Reading Assessment suggests that only 40 percent of…

Education has faced unprecedented disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic; evidence about the subsequent effect on children is of crucial importance. We use data from an oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment--a rapid assessment taking only a few minutes that measures a fundamental reading skill--to examine COVID's effects on children's reading…

There are some children who encounter unexpected reading difficulties in the fourth grade. This phenomenon has been described as late emerging reading disabilities (LERD). Using Grade 4 as a starting point, this study examined the reading development of 964 children between kindergarten and Grade 7. The results showed that 72.0% of children had…

This study examined the longitudinal effects of an early literacy intervention in Kindergarten. A group of children completed reading and cognitive measures between Kindergarten (5-6 years old) and Grade 7 (12-13 years old). Our results showed that 22% of children were identified as at-risk for reading deficits in Kindergarten, but only 6% of…

Despite impressive advances in the science of reading intervention, how to best help at-risk readers remains a point of contention. Because reading represents the synthesis of background factors and language and reading skills--all of which develop with age and experience--this meta-analysis investigated whether development (as approximated by…

This technical report presents an overview of a reading assessment used by a large school district in the Pacific Northwest. It provides sufficient background information to enable those unfamiliar with the assessment to understand the various subtests that comprise it as well as its development and application in the district for making…