The advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping for student achievement are strongly contested, with studies presenting different results. However, much of this research has focused on class-level or subject-level ability grouping. Relatively less research has focused on school-level ability grouping. More importantly, the role of teacher…

Assistive technology (AT) is a critical in providing students with visual impairments (VI) access to classroom information. However, little is known about how the fluid and diverse experiences across core-content classrooms that impact the nature of AT use among students with VI. We conducted three classroom observations of 10 secondary-age (i.e.,…

This article exemplifies how assessment design might be grounded in theory, thereby helping to strengthen validity claims. Spanning work across multiple related projects, the article first briefly summarizes an assessment system model for the elementary and secondary levels. Next the article describes how cognitive-domain theory and principles are…

Schools use an array of strategies to match curricula and instruction to students' heterogeneous skills. Although generations of scholars have debated ''tracking'' and its consequences, the literature fails to account for diversity of school-level sorting practices. In this article, we draw on the work of Sørensen and others to articulate and…

Student performance is related to motivation to learn. As motivation generally declines during lower secondary education, one might expect performance to decline as well during this period. Though, until now, it has been unclear whether this pattern exists. In the present study, we examined student performance during the early years of secondary…

This study aims to enhance understanding of the factors underlying variance in the reading comprehension skills of prelingually deaf individuals. Participants were 213 sixth through tenth graders with prelingual deafness recruited from four orthographic backgrounds (Hebrew, Arabic, English, and German) and allocated to three distinct reading…

Educators and policymakers have set a goal that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. A substantial body of research supports the idea that the path to college and career readiness begins well before middle and high school. In an earlier policy report, ACT examined the percentage of academically far off track…

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders…