This study was conducted with 11th- and 12th-grade high school students in western Florida. These students were not meeting the required achievement level in English language arts needed for graduation. This qualitative study investigated the barriers that hinder high school students' achievement in English language arts as a graduation…

Decades of federal and state education legislation enacted to increase student academic achievement and enhance school quality have pronounced impacts on teachers and their instructional practice. That impact is captured in the term intensification. Intensification is multifaceted and manifests as additional tasks accomplished simultaneously, with…

In this article, three English Language Arts teachers draw on their teaching experiences of addressing sexual violence in assigned young adult literature. The authors use their experiences to guide a series of suggestions for other teachers who wish to teach these texts in their own classes. First, the authors offer suggestions for legitimizing…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of a relationship between second-order change leadership behaviors of high school administrators and changes in student achievement on the Florida Standards Assessment English Language Arts/Reading component and the Algebra 1 End of Course examination in two large urban school districts.…

This quantitative research project identifies if a performance gap exists between student performance and student expected performance on the last two administrations of the FCAT 2.0 in Reading and the first two administrations of the FSA ELA for 9th and 10th grade students using descriptive statistics to identify the mean and distribution of the…

This report examines one component of the current school accountability system--learning gains. We find that learning gain percentages are affected by a variety of factors including starting achievement level, socioeconomic status, and English language learner status when the current definition of learning gains is used. Hence, we propose a new…

Despite the familiar American scene of lined-up students being ushered out of school buildings while their classmates lay wounded or dead inside, and despite repeated calls for restrictions on the guns used in such shootings, nearly twenty years after Columbine, the gun lobby retains a powerful grip on the nation's politicians - using money and…

Transition curricula are courses, learning modules, or online tutorials typically developed jointly by secondary and postsecondary faculty and offered no later than 12th grade to students at risk of being placed into remedial math or English programs in college. Based on interviews and other data, this brief describes key elements of English…

Teaching writing well poses several challenges in today's diverse classrooms. Despite a growing research base on teaching writing, outcomes for students with disabilities in secondary schools continue to be disappointing. Research in the naturalistic tradition that would help educators understand the knowledge and beliefs that influence teachers'…

Florida enacted legislation in 2008 for a statewide program known as the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI), which was intended to reduce the need for postsecondary remediation. The FCCRI consisted of testing grade 11 students to determine their college readiness and offering math and English college readiness and success…

Florida enacted legislation in 2008 for a statewide program known as the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI), which was intended to reduce the need for postsecondary remediation. The FCCRI consisted of testing grade 11 students to determine their college readiness and offering math and English college readiness and success…

This technical report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and resultant data for the American Instructional Resources Surveys (AIRS) that were administered to principals and teachers in spring 2019 via RAND's American Educator Panels. The AIRS focused on instructional resources used and supported in English language arts,…

"LANGUAGE!"[R] is a language arts intervention designed for struggling learners in grades 3-12 who score below the 40th percentile on standardized literacy tests. The curriculum integrates English literacy acquisition skills into a six-step lesson format. During a daily lesson, students work on six key literacy strands (which the…

In this study, we compare SpringBoard® (SB) schools that had continuously used the SB English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum for at least three years with comparable non-SB schools. For high schools, the outcomes examined were school-level AP® participation and performance for a) all AP subjects, b) ELA and social science AP subjects, and c) ELA…

City Year is a learning organization committed to the rigorous evaluation of its "Whole School Whole Child" model, which trains and deploys teams of AmeriCorps members to low-performing, urban schools to empower more students to reach their full potential. A third-party study by Policy Studies Associates (PSA) examined the impact of…