During the COVID-19 pandemic, the very youngest pupils in schools had their schooling and social interactions in the classroom disrupted by lengthy periods of school closures and remote learning. This research focuses particularly on these young pupils, and is exploring how their learning and social skills are recovering two years on from the…

Reading comprehension is contingent upon the integration of various reading skills, including word reading, reading fluency, and comprehension strategies. Students who encounter challenges in both word reading and reading comprehension present an opportunity for growth across multiple reading-related domains. Recent intervention data, as…

The science of reading has captured the attention of educators, policy makers, and the public. Elfrieda H. Hiebert recounts some of what she's learned from her recent exploration of the topic. She has found that research evidence tends to fall into three categories: research that provides unequivocal conclusions, research that holds promise for…

Rick Ginsberg and Yong Zhao want educators to question the status quo and clear out ineffective practices to make room for K-12 reforms that work. Their 2023 book, Duck and Cover: Confronting Dubious Practices in Education, Ginsberg and Zhao examine kindergarten readiness, college- and career-readiness, reading proficiency by 3rd grade, social and…

The goal of a Comprehensive K-3 Reading Policy is to ensure all students read on grade level by the end of third grade. This document shows why a K-3 reading policy is necessary, discusses evidence and research, and explains the fundamental principles of a comprehensive early literacy policy.

A Comprehensive K-3 Reading Policy establishes support and intensive reading interventions for K-3 students to ensure they read on grade level by the end of third grade. The policy also requires third grade students to demonstrate sufficient reading skills for promotion to fourth grade. For students severely below grade level and who do not…

Despite strong support for integrating reading and writing instruction, writing practice is often crowded out of the schedule in elementary classrooms. To promote increased emphasis on writing, a working group of literacy researchers highlights three writing goals and six research-based reading-to-writing practices to enliven instruction with more…

As parents, communities, educators, and policymakers continue to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning in America, many have turned to recently released results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP measures what students know and what they can do in several tested subjects, including reading,…

Civil, informed debate is essential for any healthy democracy. This is truer than ever judging from the often uncivil, fact-free public discourse one sees too often on television and social media. But does participation in formal debate training improve educational outcomes? While policy debaters historically have come from high-income public…

In this article, the author explores the Fountas & Pinnell Levelled Literacy Intervention efficacy as a tool to enhance both supplemental and whole-classroom instruction to support literacy gains for students. Exploring the efficacy of Levelled Literacy Intervention will also act as a vehicle to explore how school divisions can more…

In this paper, we present insights from the qualitative data collected during a process evaluation of a reading intervention project carried out in primary and secondary schools in West Yorkshire, England. Commercially available reading interventions, financed by the Strategic School Improvement Fund, were delivered by school staff to…

If educators want to improve reading achievement on scale, Shanahan notes, we need to organize school days more effectively, so they support increased literacy learning--not hinder it. He presents suggestions for increasing the amount of literacy instruction elementary students receive, through more flexibility of scheduling and more wisely…

In this article, we extend Liao's test for across-group comparisons of the fixed effects from the generalized linear model to the fixed and random effects of the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM). Using as our basis the Wald statistic, we developed an asymptotic test statistic for across-group comparisons of these effects. The test can be…

Multilingual children represent a rapidly growing population of students in U.S. schools. However, identification of language and learning disabilities for students from different linguistic backgrounds is complex, leading to frequent misidentification of multilingual learners for special education. This article provides guidance on how special…

About one in five students in the US attends a rural school, and over half of all school districts are in rural areas. And yet very little is known about achievement, achievement gaps, and academic growth in rural schools, including how school-year and summer changes in achievement may differ in these schools. This lack of information is…