The Afterschool Centers on Education (ACE) is the program administered through the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for the federally funded 21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) grants. The ACE Austin Cycle 9 program provides intentional afterschool program experiences that are high quality, challenging, and inspiring. Across activities and…

Policymakers have advocated academic skills building at kindergarten as a way of improving student achievement. However, early childhood educators have concerns with this policy as gains in achievement may come at the expense of children's social-emotional skills. Using a nationally representative data set of kindergartners, we find that advanced…

"Achieve3000®" is a supplemental online literacy program that provides nonfiction reading content to students in grades preK-12 and focuses on building phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing skills. "Achieve3000®" is designed to help students advance their nonfiction reading skills…

Thomas Cobb's 2007 applied linguistics paper, "Computing the Vocabulary Demands of L2 Reading" dealt with whether reading alone can build an adequate reading lexicon in a second language, or whether some sort of extra vocabulary training will normally be required. In the article, Cobb proposed that in the case of adult academic ESL…

Many school systems in the United States face the prospect of renovating existing buildings rather than constructing new facilities because of budgetary limitations and constraints. The least disruption to the educational process when a building is scheduled for renovation is to move the student body to a vacant building. This option is not…

Fifty-three percent of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in low- and middle-income countries despite an investment of between 33-49% of education expenditure on primary education. Teaching children to read in the early grades is fundamental to building resilient education systems, as the ability to read early in life is a great predictor…

This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) report, part of the WWC's Teacher Excellence topic area, explores the effects of the "eMINTS Comprehensive Program," referred to as "eMINTS" in this report, on student achievement. The strong influence of teachers on student outcomes, as well as the variation in teacher effectiveness, has led…

This report examines and explains the most recent achievement results for New York City and New York State students in district and charter schools, and to put New York City's achievement levels in context. The New York City public school system is the largest in the country, with more than 1 million students in grades prekindergarten through 12…

Rising inequality in the United States has raised concerns about potentially widening gaps in educational achievement by socio-economic status (SES). Using assessments from LTT-NAEP [Long-Term Trend assessment administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress], Main-NAEP, TIMSS [Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study],…

AISD promotes access to sustained learning for all students in music, visual art, drama, and dance. This report discusses the relationship between sequential fine arts participation and student outcomes for the school year 2017-2018 and how the relationships differ based on student characteristics (i.e., race, ethnicity, special education status…

This paper presents an evaluation of two reading methods, phonics-based instruction and whole language learning, for English Language Learners (ELLs) and discusses the learning theories, behaviorism and constructivism that are associated with each method, respectively. The study took place in a K-12 international school, with 110 Grade 1 subjects…

This paper delineates some of the ways students with high incidence special needs are currently being served with technology in the United States in K-12 to learn skills or accomplish tasks related to reading. Categories examined were read aloud tools, computer applications, traditional instructional methods that utilized technology, and online…

How can middle-level educators improve reading achievement when digitized texts and tests manage their instruction? Experienced Osage Middle School reading teachers and school administrators addressed this question as they examined their Istation reading curriculum, and higher education faculty partners were invited to portray this work. Teaching…

In this response to Sakurai, Meredith Stephens agrees that Sakurai (2015) raises an important issue of which native English speaking teachers may be unaware; Japanese learners of English typically translate into Japanese while reading English. Sakurai explained, "It is speculated that Japanese students naturally translate English into…

English language learners were more likely to attend school and to meet the STAAR passing standards in reading and math when their teachers used creative teaching strategies more frequently. These findings coincide well with the research that encourages teachers of foreign languages to be creative in their teaching so that students not only…