Being a 21st century learner may require a shift in the education paradigm. To be successful students may need to possess a different type of intelligence. Cherniss (2001), Goleman (1995), and O'Neil (1996), suggest that the key to positive life outcomes might consider emotional intelligence as more important than intellectual quotient (IQ).…

As a result of high-stakes testing pressure and financial strain within schools, fine arts programs continue to be cut from K-12 education. While research indicates the benefits of music related to learning, brain development, and reading (Kraus, Hornickel, Strait, Slater, & Thompson, 2014), many students do not receive instruction in the fine…

As state tests of student achievement are used for an increasingly wide array of high- and low-stakes purposes, evaluating their instructional sensitivity is essential. This article uses data from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Project to examine the instructional sensitivity of 4 states' mathematics and English…

The trend and demand for virtual education has grown nationwide. With an increase in students choosing this type of education, inevitably the demand for schools of this type of educational instruction has increased in number. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent of the relationship between virtual school size and student…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between virtual school size and student achievement in virtual schools in a southwestern state. Enrollment size and the following areas were studied in an attempt to determine student achievement: STAAR English Language Arts/Reading, STAAR Math, STAAR Science, and STAAR Social Studies…

Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002) stated, "Leaders are made, not born" (p. 100). The quote is indicative of the shift in skills necessary to be a successful 21st-century learner. Instead of mere academic competencies, the 21st Century learner will need a different type of intelligence to be successful. Emotional intelligence may be…

Recent years have seen the convergence of two major policy streams in U.S. K-12 education: standards/accountability and teacher quality reforms. Work in these areas has led to the creation of multiple measures of teacher quality, including measures of their instructional alignment to standards/assessments, observational and student survey measures…

In this study, we examined how the relationships between one observation protocol, the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO), and value-added measures shift when different tests are used to assess student achievement. Using data from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, we found that PLATO was more strongly related to the…

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a multicomponent reading intervention aimed at improving students' text comprehension. Two 1-year randomized controlled trials were conducted to determine the efficacy of CSR with seventh and eighth grade students. The Year 2 replication study was identical to the original Year 1 study except that the…

The primary focus of the study was to explore the effect of School Within a School reform on two components in the Adequate Yearly Progress Report by which Texas schools are measured--dropout rates and scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. The demographics of the particular study sample included 11th grade students…

Graduates of a post-baccalaureate secondary education program working on certification in five core subject fields served as a sample for transcript review to investigate how well the variables of number of hours completed for content major course work, the content major grade point average (GPA), and the age of content major course work predicted…