The impact of the New Tech Network (NTN) design on several academic measures was tested on ninth graders in four schools in one state located in the Southeastern United States. Research questions explored the extent to which achievement test scores, dual credits earned, and dropout rates differed between ninth grade students in high fidelity NTN…

Vocabulary knowledge is essential to educational progress. High quality vocabulary instruction requires supportive contextual examples to teach word meaning and proper usage. Identifying such contexts by hand for a large number of words can be difficult. In this work, we take a statistical learning approach to engineer a system that predicts…

Approximately one quarter of American students attend rural schools; however, the needs of these students are often overlooked in education policy despite well-documented limited financial resources and pervasive poverty. Relatively little is known about the experiences of gifted students in rural areas and even less about the teachers serving…

By 2013, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had adopted college- and career-ready standards in English language arts and mathematics, placing a greater emphasis on argument writing to prepare students for life after high school. Solving the specific problem of how to help teachers teach to new standards for argument writing as well as the…

Background: Teachers who engage in formative classroom assessment using practices that accurately measure student learning should be better positioned to diagnose the instructional needs of their students and to act on that information. For this reason, there has been increased interest in formative classroom assessment in recent years. Although…

This study addressed whether prior successes with educational interventions grounded in the theory of successful intelligence could be replicated on a larger scale as the primary basis for instruction in language arts, mathematics, and science. A total of 7,702 4th-grade students in the United States, drawn from 223 elementary school classrooms in…

This case study examines the use of online tools, including blogs, as a means of enhancing face-to-face professional development in writing instruction for teachers in rural districts. Since many rural districts serve large physical areas that are geographically distant from larger metropolitan areas and/or colleges and universities, teachers in…

Teacher preparation programs face great challenges in ensuring their graduates are prepared for the demands of today's classrooms. The authors explore how teacher accountability has evolved based upon federal legislation leading to adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Recognizing that future teachers will be held accountable for…

The purpose of the current study was to identify the extent to which learning styles influence the educational process as well as the outcome of elementary-age students in terms of academic achievement. This study examined potential relationships between the degree of match (as determined by comparing learning style preferences of students with…

This study examined the predictive nature of teacher ratings of student performance on the mathematical thinking and language and literacy domains of a state mandated curriculum-embedded performance assessment for children in first grade to student achievement on a criterion-referenced test in third grade in mathematics and English language arts,…

Students and teachers at Hand Middle School in Columbia, South Carolina, were in the midst of a two-year, comprehensive renovation and construction project in which some sections of their 75-year-old, historic building were being renovated and new sections added. When parts of the school were boarded up and oversized machinery first moved onto…

This article reports on the consistency of the achievement-level classifications (below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced) established in 1999 for the South Carolina Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests (PACT; Huynh, Meyer, & Barton, 2000) of English language arts and mathematics. It also utilizes the PACT longitudinal data files of…

Examines form and content of American Indian authored selections in South Carolina's high school literature anthologies. Results show only 36 percent are contemporary. The sample of traditional genres lacks balanced representation and does not reflect regional distribution of American Indians. Development of evaluative criteria specific to…

Discusses the Tadpoles Project at Schofield Middle School in Aiken, South Carolina. A basin was excavated to create a pond so that students could study various disciplines in a wetlands setting. Presents guidelines for obtaining support for such an effort. (NB)

Describes a collaborative effort in Beaufort County (South Carolina) to provide middle school students with laptop computers. Student and teacher reactions are discussed; examples of language arts projects are described; and a sidebar offers suggestions for funding that include parental contributions, corporate and community sponsorships, and…