National interest is growing in Integrated Student Support (ISS) interventions, which offer schools systematic ways to reduce barriers to learning. The present study exploits the random component embedded within the school assignment system of a large urban school district to estimate the effect of schools providing ISS on student academic…

Creating Compassion is an empathy-focused creative arts curriculum designed to provide short-term, low-cost, high-quality social-emotional learning (SEL) to communities and settings with limited resources. The present study sought to determine whether Creating Compassion was effective for increasing displays of prosocial behaviors and broad SEL…

Students with disabilities in upper elementary grades who read well below grade level often require one-to-one intensive intervention. The following study examines the effects of a combined explicit decoding plus frequency building intervention on consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word reading fluency. Participants were two third-grade students and…

In an urban city located in a Western state, the problem was that educators are challenged to implement reading interventions to support the reading needs of English Language learners (ELs) in third through fifth grade. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to investigate the perspectives of educators regarding the challenges they…

Reading on grade level by the close of third grade has been shown to impact a student's chance to graduate on time and therefore impacting future success. English learners (ELs), however, have struggled to read on grade level by the close of third grade as compared to their English-speaking peers. This quasi-experimental study determined if an…

This study describes the initial implementation of the writing component of the "Write to Read" ("W2R") literacy intervention in eight low-SES (socio-economically disadvantaged) elementary-level urban schools. Through customised onsite professional development provided by coaches, the writing component sought to build teachers'…

This study focused on a problem of practice at Mystic River School (MRS), a kindergarten through eighth grade school in an urban district in New England. Schoolwide diagnostic data showed a significant gap between multilingual learners (MLs) and their native English speaking peers in literacy. An analysis of this data, interviews with staff and…

The problem addressed in this study is that the low reading proficiency levels of marginalized elementary students significantly affect their future academic achievement and life outcomes. The purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to investigate the differences in the reading proficiency levels of marginalized Grade 3-5 students in a…

Glasses wearing at school remains low even when glasses are provided. This study investigated whether a classroom intervention to promote glasses wearing was associated with increased glasses wearing and improved classroom behavior. A pretest, posttest design was implemented with 44 students in Grades 1-4 at an urban public elementary school. Over…

Although research related to the Science of Reading has documented the positive effects of explicit, systematic reading instruction for all students, students from historically marginalized groups often experience differential opportunities to learn and are likely to perform lower than their peers on large scale measures of reading achievement.…

For children and adolescents, developing key social-emotional skills is beneficial to how they grow and learn in their environment. The objective of this study was to evaluate the overall social-emotional skills of African American students in a general education setting using a social-emotional learning program, Strong Kids. This study…

Mental health, social-emotional disparity, and the woes of not self-regulating or controlling one's mental well-being are significant factors that educational institutions are fighting to manage daily. What common thread can be used to stitch or heal the emptiness that so many urban elementary school students experience on a given day? This…

This study examined whether 2 evidence-based intervention strategies resulted in maintenance and generalization of writing fluency gains. In this study, 115 third-grade students were randomly assigned to a performance feedback intervention condition, a goal setting intervention condition, or a control condition. Neither intervention strategy…

The purpose of this study was to explore the paths by which word-problem intervention, with versus without embedded pre-algebraic reasoning instruction, improves word-problem performance. Students with mathematics difficulty (MD; n = 304) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual condition or one of two variants of word-problem intervention.…

Word problems require students to read a language-based problem, identify necessary information to answer a prompt, and perform calculation(s) to develop a problem solution. Solving word problems proves particularly challenging for students with mathematics difficulties because skill in reading, interpretation of language, and mathematics is…