This Brief Report presents an example of assessment validation using an argument-based approach. The instrument we developed is a Brief Assessment of Students' Mature Number Sense, which measures a central goal in mathematics education. We chose to develop this assessment to provide an efficient way to measure the effect of instructional practices…

Middle school is one of the most important times during which students gain knowledge. However, a large proportion of adolescents have continued to complete middle school without mastering essential knowledge of, and skills in, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Adolescents who miss school in the 30-60 days leading up to high-stakes exams…

Statewide assessments in reading and math are required every year under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, at an annual expense of billions of taxpayer dollars. Analyzing 10 years of school-level results from public schools in two states-- Nebraska and Texas--we found that year-to-year correlations of schools' test scores were…

The purpose of this quantitative research was to examine parents, students, and staff perceptions of school climate in urban middle schools and explore if relationships exist between perceived school climate, perceived reading instruction, and reading performance as measured by the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR). The…

The purpose of this study is to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the learning of students in public education through the analysis of standardized assessment performance before and during COVID-19. The study also compares virtual learning and face-to-face students' change in performance on the standardized assessments. To answer the…

Accurate and efficient universal screening is a foundational component of multi-tiered systems of support for reading. By the time students reach middle school, educators often have extant data available to inform screening decisions. Therefore, the decision to collect additional data to inform screening should be considered carefully. The…

This research study was designed to examine the impact of the incorporation of vocabulary instruction and various teacher strategies by a middle school science teachers team on student science achievement. The researcher focused on the teacher preparation of vocabulary word walls and the inclusion of specific words within individual units of study…

Part of learning a new discipline is learning the language used in the discipline. For mathematics, emergent multilingual learners (EML) must learn English and mathematical symbols in order to make meaning and communicate. The mathematics community's understanding of communication is complex and includes the use of natural language, incorporation…

Background: Little is known about how school breakfast programs are associated with school attendance and academic performance. This study evaluated Dallas Independent School District's (DISD) breakfast after the bell (BATB) program that provides breakfast for both habitually tardy and non-tardy students on (1) academic performance and (2) student…

This study adopts a cultural ecological perspective to examine how cumulative effects of external transcultural and cultural strengths are related to baseline and changes in three markers of Mexican-origin adolescents' self-growth (i.e., resilience, life meaning, and discipline). Using a three-wave longitudinal data set (5 years) of 604…

This study examined the phenomenon of college readiness in Hispanic first-generation college students. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between first-generation Hispanic student participation in an Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) elective course and college readiness. The researchers used logistic…

This first analysis of aggregated data from the Kahoot! game-based player response system demonstrates that it can provide assessments of overall US student polar knowledge and identifies differences in polar knowledge across several states. A kahoot online quiz on polar topics recorded over 25,000 United States teacher-hosted classroom players…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the type of grade configuration and racial climate of a school on the academic performance and discipline of middle school aged students. Specifically, this study was concerned with the predictive power of the type of grade configuration (stand-alone middle school vs. non-transition…

UTeach is a well-known, university-based program designed to increase the number of high-quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers in the workforce. The UTeach program was originally developed by faculty at the University of Texas at Austin but has rapidly spread and is now available at 44 universities in 21 states;…

The use of standardized assessments to monitor the success and productivity of public school systems in the United States is arguably a necessary component of state accountability systems. This research study is not intended to challenge the compulsion of accountability via testing, but the results of this study do raise questions regarding the…