Understanding and addressing the literacy needs of middle school students is critical in ensuring their academic success. This quantitative study examines the literacy growth among middle school students participating in Tier II Response to Intervention and Instruction (RTI[superscript 2]) programs over the 2023-2024 academic year. It investigates…

The problem is that many public-school educations in various states rely on standardized testing resulting in misguided policies that further affect teaching and learning. This exploratory case study aimed to explore how teachers with 5 to 10 years of teaching experience in the Florida Region describe the influence of standardized testing on…

This study investigates the influence of Explicit Instruction (EI) on the mathematics achievement of students attending Belmont Middle School (BMS). There is an urgent need for schools to evaluate the instructional strategies they have been adopting to identify whether they have any significant impact on students' mathematics performance. With the…

Although Christians comprise the majority of the population in the United States, they make up less than one third of the scientific community. This underrepresentation is attributed to the desire to avoid the secular culture in academia or self-selection due to a perceived incompatibility or belief in negative stereotypes of Christian scientists.…

The achievement gap, or opportunity gap, in education is when one group of students outperforms another group of students in statistical category. For decades, these gaps been analyzed in an attempt to support students and close these differences in categorical scores. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to focus on closing the…

The learning environment in K-12 education has been a topic in education for many years, especially in the United States. The problem that was addressed in this mixed methods study is that students' standardized test scores may be affected by the learning environment--whether a traditional classroom or a virtual setting. The purpose of this…

The purpose of the quantitative ex-post facto study was to determine to what extent a predictive relationship exists between students' reading comprehension skills and mastery of conceptualizing mathematical problems for students in the fifth through eighth grades in a metropolitan area in the northeastern United States. The Federal School…

The zero-sum game of education is supported by the implementation standardized testing in a manner that disenfranchises Black students. While assessments are accountability tools for ensuring rigorous teaching and for measuring student learning, the impact of these tests on students' identity needs to be examined. The demands of a knowledge-based…

In this state, one constant that students with disabilities have experienced has been the lack of accessibility to the high-stakes standardized test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). The purpose of this Action Research study was to investigate and improve the access, to MCAS testing for students with disabilities in…

This quantitative research examined the effect of the implementation of project-based learning and assessment on the standardized test scores of high school students. Data were collected through a quantitative approach using standardized test scores for ninth-grade students taking the end-of-course World History and Geography to 1500 A.D. (C.E.)…

The evolution of U.S. secondary school mathematics requirements throughout the 20th century included a significant shift towards more rigorous standards by the end of the century. Initially, many states required minimal or no mathematics for high school graduation. However, reforms led most states to adopt a 3-year mathematics requirement, with…

Students with different abilities perform lower on state standardized tests, such as the STAAR test (Texas Education Agency, n.d.). The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to study the underlying causes that contributed to the low performance of students with different abilities on STAAR standardized tests and strategies the…

Educators rely on a conglomeration of assessment instruments to appraise, measure, monitor, and document evidence of students' academic readiness, learning progressions, acquisition of interdisciplinary knowledge, and extensive educational needs. The Mississippi Academic Assessment Program for Mathematics (MAAP-M) and the i-Ready Assessment…

This quasi-experimental study aimed to determine if there is a statistically significant difference in student test scores when a modified instructional sequence in middle school science is used versus the instructional sequence suggested by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Grade 8 science cumulative Standards of Learning (SOL) test results from…

This convergent mixed methods study sought to explore the effects of engineering design challenges (EDCs) on middle school students' achievement. Data was collected from four middle schools from an urban school district in Maryland. Two of these, Group A, included teachers with experience with EDC design and implementation; the other two schools,…