This "Eighth Annual Report Card" tracks progress on Boston's goals for educating learners of all ages. The report lays out Boston Opportunity Agenda's current metrics, the baseline that has been established for the future, and the progress to be made over the course of the next five years. This report card contains the most up-to-date…

This study investigates the benefits of no-stakes educational testing during students' summer vacation as a strategy to mitigate summer learning loss. Fifty-one students in Grades 3-8 from the Every Child Valued (ECV) and Lawrence Community Center (LCC) summer programs in Lawrenceville, NJ, took short, online assessments throughout the summer,…

We evaluated the relationship between victimization and academic achievement from a nonlinear perspective using a cusp catastrophe model. Participants were 62 students with identified learning disabilities (LD) using statewide criteria in Greece. Students participated in a 2-year cohort-sequential design. Reading assessments involved measures of…

The purpose of the present studies was to provide the means to create brief versions of instruments that can aid the diagnosis and classification of students with learning disabilities and comorbid disorders (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). A sample of 1,108 students with and without a diagnosis of learning disabilities took part…

Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) is a period of time given to students to read self-selected materials during their school day. This study examines the effect of participation in a SSR program on reading attitudes and reading achievement of students as measured by the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile (AMRP) and the Northwest Evaluation…

In 2007, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute collaborated on "The Proficiency Illusion," a study that illustrated the issues created by having each state set its own standards for what constitutes student proficiency for reading and mathematics tests, while holding all states to the same…

This report examines the implementation and effects of the academic summer program for middle school students offered by Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL). BELL's middle school program serves rising sixth- through eighth-grade students who are performing one to two years below grade level. The goals of the program are to increase students'…

The "2017 KIDS COUNT Data Book" urges policymakers not to back away from targeted investments that help U.S. children become healthier, more likely to complete high school and better positioned to contribute to the nation's economy as adults. The "Data Book" also shows the child poverty rate in 2015 continued to drop, landing…

Florida requires that students who do not meet grade-level reading proficiency standards on the end-of-year state assessment (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, FCAT) receive intensive reading intervention. With the stakes so high, teachers and principals are interested in using screening or diagnostic assessments to identify students with a…

This mixed method study examined the use of repeated reading with eighteen, eighth grade special education and regular education students. The purpose was to study use of repeated reading's structured, systematic, oral reading intervention while also seeking to further analyze LaBerge and Samuels' "Theory of Automaticity"…

The "Seventh Annual Report Card" provides the most up-to-date information available on Boston's education pipeline, from kindergarten through college graduation, including measures for school readiness, 3rd-grade reading proficiency, 6th-grade mathematics proficiency, 10th-grade academic proficiency, high school completion, dropout…

Online texts present unique challenges to readers, requiring them to interact with texts in ways that differ from their interactions with static, print texts (Kress, 2003; 2010; McKenna, 2003; Reinking, 1998). Due to the multimodal, multilayered, and nonlinear nature of online texts, readers may also employ strategies when they read online,…

This study investigated the component skills underlying reading fluency in a heterogeneous sample of 527 eighth grade students. Based on a hypothetical measurement model and successive testing of nested models, structural equation modeling revealed that naming speed, decoding, and language were uniquely associated with reading fluency. These…

Just as ready-made clothes may not provide a perfect fit for all bodies, math lessons may not be a perfect fit for all students. Published instructional tasks, including problems in mathematics textbooks, often need to be tailored to be meaningful, relevant, or accessible to each student. Ways are possible to take high-level reasoning tasks and…

Some children demonstrate adequate or better reading achievement in early school grades but fall significantly behind their peers in later grades. These children are often referred to as late-emerging poor readers. In this study, we investigated the prevalence and heterogeneity of these poor readers. We also examined the early language and…