Florida, from 1971 to 2014 has used the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) as a yearly accountability tool throughout the education system in the state (Bureau of K-12 Assessment, 2005). Schools use their own assessments to determine if students are making progress throughout the year. In one school district within Florida, Performance…

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.…

Purpose: Researchers have developed a constellation model of decodingrelated reading disabilities (RD) to improve the RD risk determination. The model's hallmark is its inclusion of various RD indicators to determine RD risk. Classification methods such as logistic regression (LR) might be one way to determine RD risk within the constellation…

District leaders in a large urban school district in central Florida wanted to examine the efficacy of a new curriculum designed to enhance the word knowledge of grade 5 students so as to improve reading achievement. The new curriculum, called Word Knowledge Instruction (WKI), consists of 15-minute lessons 4 days a week for 20 weeks. The lessons…

The purpose of this quantitative causal comparative study was to examine to what extent if any, there was a difference in academic and recreational reading motivation and reading achievement between third grade students who participated in the Accelerated Reading curriculum (AR) (reading software management system), as defined in definitions and…

There is an extensive body of research establishing measures of oral reading fluency as valid and reliable predictors of important reading outcomes and performance on high stakes tests (Good, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 2001). The present study was conducted to determine whether these findings also apply to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test…

This Information Capsule answers the most frequently asked questions about Miami-Dade County Public Schools' (M-DCPS) academic performance during the 2018-2019 school year. M-DCPS earned a District Performance Grade of "A" in 2019. The percentage of M-DCPS schools earning a School Performance Grade of "A" remained stable from…

Little is known about the early educational performance of children in migrant farmworker families. The authors examined the school readiness and early school success of 289 four-year-old preschool children of migrant families attending Redlands Christian Migrant Association centers. Children's school readiness was assessed and public school…

This study examined the predictive validity and classification accuracy of individual- and group-administered screening measures relative to student performance on a year-end state reading assessment in two states. A sample of 321 students was assessed in the areas of word-level and text fluency, as well as reading comprehension in the fall of…

This study examined the predictive validity and classification accuracy of individual and group-administered screening measures relative to student performance on a year-end state reading assessment in two states. A sample of 321 students were assessed in the areas of word-level and text fluency, as well as reading comprehension in the fall of…

A fairly recent definition of reading disability (RD) is that in the form of a hybrid model. The model views RD as a latent construct that is manifested through various observable unexpected impairments in reading-related skills and through inadequate response to intervention. The current report evaluated this new conceptualization of RD from an…

Federal and state legislation focused on closing the achievement gap, have placed emphasis on providing students with teachers who display specific characteristics. While this has been the mandate, many schools still fail to close the achievement gap and research linking specific teacher characteristics with student achievement, validates the…

This study explores the long-term impact on participation in the Linda Ray Intervention Program (LRIP) for children (n = 54) who were developmentally delayed and prenatally exposed to cocaine. By identifying a group of programme graduates from a high crime/high poverty neighbourhood in Miami-Dade County using ArcGIS 10.2 software, a…

This study explored the relationship between the reading ability and science achievement of students in grades 5, 8, and 9. Reading ability was assessed with four measures: word recognition, vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and comprehension (23% of all passages were on science topics). Science achievement was assessed with state…

This study aimed to compare the performance of elementary students on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) in reading and mathematics between students who received SES services in grades 3-5 and students who qualified for free SES services, but did not receive SES services. Title I funds are set aside annually to pay private providers…