Michigan is at a critical moment in time -- a historic moment where citizens and leaders must choose whether the state will take advantage of new opportunities to become a top ten education state -- or face a continued and dramatic educational decline. Today, national data reveal that Michigan's public education system is among the poorest…

In 1996 President Clinton established the America Reads Challenge Act (1997), which included a commitment that every child will read independently and well by the end of third grade. This initiative was predicated on links between achievement and poverty (Riley, 1996, 2002) and that children reading below grade level in the early grades perform…

The School District of the City of Saginaw, Michigan operates a compensatory education delivery system in reading and mathematics consisting of two programs, elementary and secondary Academic Achievement (A2). The program was designed to provide direct instruction to some 2,613 students in grades one through nine. The goal of A2 was to improve the…