Background/Context: Accelerated instructional strategies for developmental education have been promoted as a way to help underprepared students to progress more quickly through college-level coursework. Yet, what remains unknown is whether certain accelerated strategies are more effective than others and whether this initial acceleration may lead…

The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of writing instruction across time and grade bands. We used quantitative and qualitative analyses of teacher interviews and video records of classroom instruction of English language arts writing instruction in 97 fourth- through eighth-grade classrooms in 2010 and 2018. Video records showed a…

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…

Teacher evaluation systems treat instructional quality as generic. Principals often observe elementary teachers in one subject and generalize assessments to all subjects. However, there is little empirical work to justify these decisions. This study provides needed evidence about whether elementary teachers engage in comparable instruction across…

High school graduation rates in the United States are at an all-time high, yet many of these graduates are deemed not ready for postsecondary coursework when they enter college. This study examines the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of remedial courses in middle school using a regression discontinuity design. While the short-term test…

Building upon reflection as a tool for enhanced metacognition, the researcher postulated that a positive correlation would exist between application of a reflection instrument and students' level of academic performance and motivation in an urban high school English class. A statistically insignificant correlation was found between either…

Academic underpreparedness is an issue for many first-time-in-college students, particularly those entering community colleges. Whereas many underprepared students enroll in developmental education, research has indicated that traditional remediation may not increase students' chances for success. Therefore, states and colleges have begun to…

Academic underpreparedness is an issue for many first-time-in-college students, particularly those entering community colleges. Whereas many underprepared students enroll in developmental education, research has indicated that traditional remediation may not increase students' chances for success. Therefore, states and colleges have begun to…

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…

This Research Brief investigated differences among schools in the initial student achievement and annual rates of ELA growth in middle grades using a variety of student and school demographic characteristics. It found a statistically significant difference in the initial ELA achievement but not in the annual rates of ELA growth between students in…

In the present transcendental phenomenological study, we describe the experiences of introverted undergraduate students in an active learning English classroom environment at a community college in Florida. We selected 10 participants whose Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) scores indicated clear to very clear on the introversion measure and who…

Gateway courses in English challenge students to strengthen skills in critical thinking, reading, grammar, and writing structure and strategies -- skills that also help build competency in comprehension and composition. They can also prove to be a particular challenge to many community college students. This case study examines the efforts at…

In this study, 180 first-time-in-college (FTIC) students at Miami Dade College, Florida in need of remedial instruction in basic mathematics, reading, and sentence skills utilized the A[superscript +]dvancer[R] College Readiness Online software. Significant results were found with increased ACCUPLACER[R] scores; number of students who avoided at…

Community college stakeholders are searching with increasing urgency for approaches with the potential to improve the success rates for community college students, particularly those in need of developmental education. "Learning communities," which place cohorts of students together in two or more courses for one semester, are a popular…

The Learning Communities Demonstration is a national research project that is testing the effectiveness of learning communities in six community colleges across the United States: Merced College in California; The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Baltimore, Maryland; Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida; Houston…