Social promotion is defined as the practice of allowing students who failed to meet performance standards and academic requirements the opportunity to pass on to the next grade with their peers. Although the A+ Educational Reform Act abolished the use of the practice, social promotion continues to occur in numerous school districts across one…

The author uses Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, and habitus to analyze how students, parents, teachers, and administrators are responding to Georgia's test-based grade retention policy in reading at one Georgia elementary school. In this multiple case study, the author interviewed, observed, and collected documents regarding ten fifth…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, signed into law in January 2002, established a decade of test-driven school reform in an attempt to increase student achievement and reduce the student achievement gap. The state of Georgia created the Criterion Reference Competency Test (CRCT) to align with the guidelines of NCLB. This study examined…

The purpose of this study was to examine the academic achievement of students with disabilities compared to students without disabilities on standardized assessments. This study collected archival data from urban middle schools in six school districts in the State of Georgia. Data was collected from students in grades six through eight on the…

While curriculum specialists and committees often decide how mathematics is taught, it is ultimately principals who influence the extent to which these initiatives are carried out. The overall goal of this article is to provide school leaders with classroom-based research that describes one way of improving the math skills of middle school…

Many authors have posited that agricultural education curriculum in middle schools may enhance student performance in science. To determine the effect that agricultural education curriculum has upon Georgia middle schools' student performance in science, this descriptive study compared science knowledge among middle school students in Georgia who…

Fluent reading enables readers to focus on gaining meaning from what is read. This crucial facet of reading is often neglected instruction in elementary and is nearly non-existent in middle and high school instruction (Allington, 1983; Rasinski, Padak, McKeon, Wilfong, Friedauer, & Heim, 2005). At the elementary level, fluency instruction focuses…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the academic impacts of the Twenty-First Century Community Learning Centers on students who participated in this program. The following research questions guided the study: (a) are there significant differences between the Criterion Reference Competency Test English Language Arts scores of…

During the 2006-2007 school year, 14% of the eighth-grade mathematics students at the study campus failed to meet advancement criteria on the Georgia Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT). The purpose of this quantitative pretest-posttest and control-group design study was to first investigate the effects of a mastery goal approach to…

Today, the importance of learning mathematics and reading by students in our schools has been underscored by the introduction of various high-stakes testing regimens in all states across the country. The requirements mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) necessitated a response to intervention that introduced many difficult challenges…

Repeated poor performance by students with special needs on the Indiana Statewide Test of Educational Progress (ISTEP) in an Indiana middle school supported the need for instructional changes. Following the implementation of a full inclusion program, a problem arose in that the program had not been evaluated and effectiveness was in question. This…

The purpose of this study is to compare the teacher retention rates in public elementary and middle schools in Georgia that met or did not meet the academic performance component of Adequate Yearly Progress. The teacher retention rates were expected to be higher in schools that met the academic performance component of AYP and lower in the schools…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect an afterschool program had on middle school at-risk students' standardized test scores and behavior. The study examined students who participated in the 21st Century Community Learning Center afterschool program at two similar schools in a county in Northwest Georgia. Data were compiled for the…

This quantitative study analyzed data to find a valid and reliable assessment for progress monitoring also having predictive power of a student's future reading performance on a state-mandated standardized reading achievement evaluation. The Response to Intervention (RTI) model was implemented in the language arts classrooms of a rural middle…

More and more, data from standardized assessments are being used to make instructional decisions for struggling middle school readers. Administrators must stop spending money on "silver-bullet" curriculum programs and start spending money on training opportunities that will lead to autonomy and creativity in the classroom. In this article, the…