Students in public education are more at risk now than ever before. Schools were held to increasingly higher levels of accountability and it was the individual student that was held accountable for increasing standards and knowledge. This study addressed the Response to Intervention mandate handed down by federal and state governments. In effort…

For the past decade, the accountability model associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) emphasized proficiency on end of year tests; with Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) the emphasis on proficiency within statewide testing programs, though now integrated with other measures of student learning, nevertheless remains a primary metric for…

Students with significant cognitive disabilities are eligible to participate in two statewide testing options for accountability: alternate assessments or general assessments with appropriate accommodations. Participation guidelines are generally quite vague, leading to students "switching" test participation between years. In this…

This research was designed to examine the difference in student performance between minority magnet school students who live in the residential area for those magnet schools and minority students assigned to a non-magnet residential school. This difference in performance was measured by scale score differences from the North Carolina End-of-Grade…

Teacher preparation programs face great challenges in ensuring their graduates are prepared for the demands of today's classrooms. The authors explore how teacher accountability has evolved based upon federal legislation leading to adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Recognizing that future teachers will be held accountable for…

Recent national and state standards of accountability have focused on increasing student performance and achievement as well as teacher quality. Included in this challenge is the issue of teacher compensation and how it has evolved with the efforts of providing quality instruction in order to improve the performance of students. Texas has…

The driving force behind high-stakes-testing may be attributed to the issue of education reform. In the last decade, high-stakes testing has generated intense controversy among educators and parents. The use of high-stakes testing in making decisions about student promotion and graduation is both controversial and significant. The purpose of the…

The purpose of this research was to examine the relation between students' personality traits and the extent of their engagement and facilitation in peer-led literature circle discussions. The research was guided by two questions. To what extent do reading ability, gender, and personality traits predict the quality of verbal engagement in…

The passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 established foreign languages as a core curricular area. Nonetheless, educational policymakers at the state and local levels often opt to allocate greater resources and give instructional priority to content areas in which students, and ultimately the school systems themselves, are held…