The present study examined potential synergistic relationships between reading engagement and reading comprehension among 3,689 third and fourth graders across 59 schools in North Carolina. Using hierarchical regression analyses, we replicated previous findings that reading engagement explains unique variance in reading comprehension. Our results…

Third grade is a critical checkpoint in a child's educational journey. By the end of third grade, children need literacy skills that prepare them for increasing curriculum demands in fourth grade and beyond. Students who are not reading on grade level by this point are significantly more likely to drop out of high school or fail to graduate on…

Third grade at-risk students in Wilson County Schools, Wilson, NC continuously perform below the state average on the North Carolina Third Grade Reading End-of-Grade test. Leaders in the Wilson County Schools school district implemented a literacy pull-out intervention program for third grade at-risk students as a strategy to improve reading…

This study investigated the feasibility of multicomponent linguistic awareness intervention on early literacy skills in at-risk kindergarteners. Seventeen students, including native Spanish-speaking English language learners (n = 10) and native English speakers (n = 7), participated in a 6-week small-group therapy program, for a total of 12…

"ACCESS", A Culture Creating Effective Systems for Success, was a three-year Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. The "ACCESS" grant led the way for a district-wide redesign of educational practices based on the novel approach of…

To improve the reading comprehension outcomes of children in high-poverty schools, policymakers need to identify reading interventions that show promise of effectiveness at scale. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a low-cost and large-scale summer reading intervention that provided comprehension lessons at the end of the school year and…

This article reports on a study developed in order to help a group of six limited-proficient students of English (newcomers) to improve their reading comprehension of English novels by designing storyboards, a type of graphic organizer that condenses both images and scripts. The investigation was carried out in a public school in the state of…

Pay for performance plans are spreading across the country due to the Obama administration's $4 billion Race to the Top initiative, which places a high priority on merit pay. Through a program that involved public accountability and bonuses, the state of North Carolina awarded more than $1 billion in school-based performance bonuses for meeting…

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools--which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools)--to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises…