A mixed methods study is used to investigate the effectiveness of a professional development program intended to enhance teacher knowledge and student learning so as to systematically improve student achievement in elementary literacy. In this study, a large urban school district partnered with a local university to provide intervention in a Title…

Prior research suggests that males outperform females, on average, on multiple-choice items compared to their relative performance on constructed-response items. This paper characterizes the extent to which gender achievement gaps on state accountability tests across the United States are associated with those tests' item formats. Using roughly 8…

During the 2017-2018 school year, SEG Measurement conducted a study of the effectiveness of Imagine Language & Literacy, an online system that provides individualized adaptive instruction and breaks down skills into component parts to help students become proficient readers. The study was conducted in three districts in Texas. Research…

This study examined the strength and direction of the relationship between the STAAR exam's reading and mathematics portions and the FitnessGRAM's cardiovascular portion for fourth grade students located in Region 6 from the state of Texas. Using existing, archival data consisting of 4,215 students from 36 elementary schools, a non-experimental…

Early fine motor ability is significantly associated with later achievement, even after controlling for typical child-level predictors of school outcomes. Previous longitudinal studies have confirmed this but typically have not included low-income, at-risk populations. Research has distinguished two different aspects of fine motor skills: those…

Prior research demonstrates the existence of gender achievement gaps and the variation in the magnitude of these gaps across states. This paper characterizes the extent to which the variation of gender achievement gaps on standardized tests across the United States can be explained by differing state accountability test formats. A comprehensive…

A fundamental claim for Common Core State Standards (CCSS)-aligned assessments is that they will lead to better teaching practices. The purpose of this study is to seek evidence in support of this claim by surveying teachers about their instructional practices, test preparation strategies, and test score use both before and after the introduction…

The relationship between school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) and school-level academic achievement has not been established. Most experimental research has found little to no evidence that SWPBIS has a distal effect on school-level achievement. Yet, an underlying assumption of SWPBIS is that improving social…

This study defines subpopulation item parameter drift (SIPD) as a change in item parameters over time that is dependent on subpopulations of examinees, and hypothesizes that the presence of SIPD in anchor items is associated with bias and/or lack of invariance in three psychometric outcomes. Results show that SIPD in anchor items is associated…

Integration of art into school curricula has the potential to increase multiple abilities in student populations. However, the process through which cognition and behavior are affected is not well understood. The current study is among the first large-scale, longitudinal examinations of arts integration on improving student creativity and…

Today's economy demands that all young people develop high-level literacy, quantitative reasoning, problem solving, communication, and collaboration skills, all grounded in a rigorous and content-rich K-12 curriculum. Acquiring these skills ensures that high school graduates are academically prepared to pursue the future of their choosing.…

Input is considered one of the most important factors in the acquisition of lexical and grammatical skills. Input has been found to interact with other factors, such as learner cognitive skills and the circumstances where language is heard. Language learning itself has sometimes been found to enhance cognitive skills. Indeed, intensive contact…

Disrupted schooling can heavily impact the amount of education pupils receive. Starting in early June of 2011 a huge social outburst of pupil protests, walk-outs, riots and school occupations called the Chilean Winter caused more than 8 million of lost school days. Within a matter of days, riots reached the national level with hundreds of…

Main idea and summary are essential elements of reading comprehension. We report results from Grades 4 and 5 student performance on two years of state-mandated standardized reading testing which indicate that students perform statistically significantly lower on main idea and summary questions on the tests than any other question category. In this…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through The Nation's Report Card, the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students perform in reading various texts and responding to those texts by answering…