Background: Late secondary-level students (those in their final 2 years of secondary school) preparing for the demands of university and careers increasingly face texts written in academic language. Unfortunately, few intervention studies show how instruction can improve their reading achievement. Methods: The 152 student participants (16-17 years…

This paper discusses educational insights drawn from a mixed-methods study in Religious Education (RE). The study involved 238 teachers and school leaders, working in 65 Catholic schools in Western Australia (WA). The focus of the study was the educators' perceptions of a large-scale, standardised assessment (LSA) called "The Bishops'…

Academic achievement in American high schools is increasingly defined in terms of quantifiable values. Despite being designed to produce favorable data, explicit standardized-test preparation has an insignificant impact on scores and is counterproductive to the cultivation of attributes necessary for success in higher education and effective civic…

The present work seeks to establish a comparison between two different and distant evaluation tools applied to the Dominican student population in order to measure the efficiency of our educational system in the recent years, one of them measured the quality of Dominican education in three areas (the PISA Test), whereas the other tested the…

The adoption and implementation of state science standards based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have posed significant challenges for the development and interpretation of science Large-Scale Assessments (LSA); specifically, the extent to which the assessment items align with the standards. Previous research has relied on large…

Prior research in mathematical assessments has indicated varying results of predictive variables and further research has been recommended to support students, parents, teachers, and school administration. The purpose of this research was to determine how well a student's performance on a mathematics domain at the state level may be predicted…

Employing a mixed-methods research design, this study examines how a newly designed dual language program in an urban school advances language proficiencies among Spanish-English bilingual 6th graders in relation to content area achievement as measured on NYS standardized tests in English Language Arts and Math. It further investigates how…

The New York City P-TECH Grades 9-14 (P-TECH 9-14) high school model involves a partnership between the New York City Department of Education, the City University of New York (CUNY), and employer partners that collaborate with the schools implementing it. The schools prepare students for both college and careers in science, technology,…

Reading comprehension is the foundation of academic success as well as becoming a necessity of developing self-sufficient life skills. Lack of proficient reading skills are looming over middle grade students' ability to comprehend reading material across content areas. However, a lack of the skills needed to sustain a moderately productive life is…

Item nonresponses are prevalent in standardized testing. They happen either when students fail to reach the end of a test due to a time limit or quitting, or when students choose to omit some items strategically. Oftentimes, item nonresponses are nonrandom, and hence, the missing data mechanism needs to be properly modeled. In this paper, we…

This paper examines how high-stakes, standardized testing shapes language and literacy instruction for emergent bilingual students in a public high school on the U.S./Mexico border. Drawing from discourses of citizenship education and language and literacy theory and scholarship, this paper finds state-mandated exit exams overwhelming guide…

The question of equivalency regarding course modality has plagued and intrigued educators for as long as multiple modalities have existed. In the modern world of academia, the two prevailing modalities are face-to-face or traditional courses and online courses. A multitude of factors have contributed to the increase in online course offerings,…

Building off of other studies that examined the effectiveness of double-dose algebra programs such as Nomi and Allensworth (2009), this dissertation compared the performance outcomes of students enrolled in one of two alternatives to traditional high school algebra, a double-dose and a single-dose algebra program. This work utilized multiple…

The purpose of this quantitative study with a correlational design was to examine if and to what extent a relationship exists between self- and teacher-ratings of student engagement and standardized test performance in a school in southern Los Angeles County. The overall research question was, is there a relationship between self- and…

Recent years have seen efforts to increase STEM education in schools that the United States has not witnessed since the Cold War (Dean, 2005). One way in which schools have attempted to meet this goal is the inclusion of makerspaces (sometimes referred to as STEM labs, STEAM labs, innovation centers). Their goal is to shirk "traditional"…