Education reform in the United States is heavily regulated and has undergone various iterations in the past several decades. With each passing legislation, government mandates and educational initiatives become the focus of reform. School districts must constantly find ways to keep up with increasing state and federal accountability standards.…

The present study employed a difference-in-difference approach to determine the impact of a technologically enhanced diagnostic and formative assessment system implemented in one US state in kindergarten through third grade on school-level end-of-year third-grade reading test scores and percentage of students receiving special education services.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between face-to-face learning environments before the pandemic during the 2018-2019 school year and varied learning modalities after the pandemic during the 2020-2021 school year. NWEA MAP Growth data was collected for third-grade students in elementary schools in a rural school district…

The purpose of this study was to determine if ongoing, sustained professional development in the area of reading resulted in an increase in student achievement on reading scores using i-Ready reading comprehension data. For the purpose of this study, students were divided into two groups: Group 1 was taught by teachers who received ongoing,…

Complex research questions often need large samples to obtain accurate estimates of parameters and adequate power. Combining extant data sets into a large, pooled data set is one way this can be accomplished without expending resources. Measurement invariance (MI) modeling is an established approach to ensure participant scores are on the same…

Both school and district administrators use the results of standardized, large-scale tests to inform decisions about the need for, or success of, educational programs and interventions. However, test results at the school level are subject to random fluctuations due to changes in cohort, test items, and other factors outside of the school's…

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency (CBM-R) is used as an indicator of reading proficiency, and to measure at risk students' response to reading interventions to help ensure effective instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare model-based words read correctly per minute (WCPM) scores (computerized oral reading…

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency (CBM-R) is used as an indicator of reading proficiency, and to measure at risk students' response to reading interventions to help ensure effective instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare model-based words read correctly per minute (WCPM) scores (computerized oral reading…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether school type (Title I versus non-Title I), English learner (EL) student percentage, and low-socioeconomic status (low-SES) student percentage could statistically predict the percentage of third-grade students who perform at the Meets Grade Level (MGL) performance on the State of Texas…

The state of Texas requires a reading inventory for all kinder, first, and second grades students, as well as the state assessment in reading for third grade. Educators face numerous challenges when attempting to teach children and meet the rigor on state assessments. In order for students to be successful on state assessments, teachers must…

This brief provides information about student literacy performance of students with different background characteristics and learning environments. It draws from data collected and analyzed in the report "A First Look at Early Literacy Performance in Massachusetts: Results of Initial Analysis Based on State Grantee Literacy Screening…

This research uses a descriptive quantitative statistical design to examine campus-level results from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR). The focus is on describing the achievement disparities between campuses that implemented Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs and those implementing Dual Language (DL)…

Background: In countries with German as an official language, children with German as a second language perform overall worse in school than their German native speaking peers. This particularly affects written language skills, which require advanced language knowledge. The reasons are manifold, but one is prominent, namely poor vocabulary…

In this study, we investigated the predictive value of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) measures for performance on a high-stakes reading assessment at the end of third grade. DIBELS measures were administered to students at the end of third grade, around the same time as their high-stakes tests. Collectively, the…

In this investigation, differences in the reading performance as a function of degree of economic disadvantage for Texas Grade 3 students were examined. Data were obtained from the Texas Education Agency on all Texas Grade 3 students for the 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and 2014-2015 school years. In all analyses, statistically significant differences,…