This study examined the relationship between the structural classroom environment (self-contained, team-taught, and departmentalized) and student performance on the 2014 Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in reading, Language Arts, mathematics, science, and social studies in grades three through five. A secondary purpose examined…

School climate has increasingly been recognized as an essential component of school improvement owing to the established associations between a positive school climate and academic outcomes for students. Our study examines associations among a brief measure of school climate assessing elementary student perceptions and the College and Career Ready…

Elementary instruction of fifth grade classrooms was found to be primarily in two organizational models in a school district northwest of Atlanta, Georgia. The self-contained classroom provided a generalist teacher responsible for the instruction of all academic subjects to one group of students throughout the day, while departmentalized…

Scope and Method of Study: The researcher's evaluation of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance's (WAWA) programs highlighted that few if any of the offered educational programs included a program evaluation, especially the most promising, the Enviroscape® Watershed learning module. The education programs that were customized and developed by the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the use of Readers' Theatre to improve the reading ability of elementary students receiving special education services. In this study, two groups of students were chosen to participate based on their academic Reading levels and their placement in the Special Education program. The students'…

Students with disabilities in Grades 3-5 in a Georgia school are not meeting state academic standards. The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to ensure that all students meet these standards; those schools that do not make gains enter into School Improvement status. This study was conducted to determine if staff development that focused on…

This study is part of the core research agenda of the five-year, Goal 3 grant funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U. S. Department of Education "Improving the Teaching and Learning of English Language Learners: The Instructional Conversation Model." In video review of teaching, bias in evaluation or rating is evident in many…

The purpose of this study was to determine if principal tenure, principal stability, and principal educational experience in public education along with school-level variables predicted elementary school student achievement. A second purpose was to examine whether there was a significant difference between (a) levels of principal tenure and levels…

Despite efforts mandated by national legislation, the state of Georgia has made little progress in improving Grade 5 students' standardized test scores in science, spurring the need for social change. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to determine whether there was a significant difference in the student achievement in…

The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to examine whether differences exist in the mathematics achievement of fifth grade gifted students based on the instructional delivery model used for mathematics instruction, cluster or collaborative, as defined by the Georgia Department of Education. The content area of mathematics, an area…

With the increased emphasis on informational text with Common Core State Standards and the difficulty many students have with this type of text, this study examined the effects of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) on informational text comprehension and metacognitive awareness of fifth grade students. Participating students included a…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate whether or not informational writing in the science curriculum would impact fifth grade students' science achievement and conceptual understanding. The population of this study came from a metropolitan school district in the state of Georgia for school year 2012-2013. The quantitative data…

Reading is a skill, which is essential for a child's school success. The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to investigate the effects of the Reading Recovery (RR) Program. The data utilized were from two groups of students at-risk in the area of reading, first-grade students involved in at least 12 weeks of Reading…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)'s emphasis of reading, language arts, and mathematics (RLA&M) and its de-emphasis of science has been a source of great concern among educators. Through an objectivist and constructionist framework, this study explored the unforeseen effects of the NCLB on public science education among Title I (TI) and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between professional learning community (PLC) characteristics and levels of trust, and their impact on student academic achievement in fifth and eighth grade mathematics, based on Georgia's state academic test. This research was designed to answer the following questions: is student…