Educational inequality due to family socioeconomic status (SES) has been the focus of both public dialogue and education research in the United States for many years. The current study aims to understand how educational inequality due to family SES has changed in the United States. Specifically, the study focuses on the changes in achievement gaps…

Native Hawaiian students represent the largest single ethnic group in Hawai'i, at 27 percent of the student population in 2008/09. This REL Pacific report, "Comparing the Achievement Patterns of Native Hawaiian and Non-Native Hawaiian Grade 8 Students in Reading and Math," reports the reading and math proficiency rates of grade 8 Native…

This summary describes a larger report that discusses how Native Hawaiian students represent the largest single ethnic group in Hawai'i, at 27 percent of the student population in 2008/09. This larger REL Pacific report, "Comparing the Achievement Patterns of Native Hawaiian and Non-Native Hawaiian Grade 8 Students in Reading and Math,"…

Several social-emotional learning (SEL) or social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs have been shown to be effective at improving SEL/SECD skills, and some have also provided evidence of effectiveness in improving student behavior and academic achievement (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Very few SEL…

Federal policy on alternate assessment based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAS) inspired this research. Specifically, an experimental study was conducted to determine whether tests composed of modified items would have the same level of reliability as tests composed of original items, and whether these modified items helped reduce…

This study investigated the effects of using modified items in achievement tests to enhance accessibility. An experiment determined whether tests composed of modified items would reduce the performance gap between students eligible for an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS) and students not eligible, and the…

This study was designed to answer the question: What is the status of student achievement in middle school mathematics in the Pacific Region jurisdictions? Findings provide a portrait of the types of mathematic assessments used in grades 7 and 8 and of how well students are performing. In addressing the question of mathematics achievement in…

Observation of social studies lessons in a bilingual and a regular classroom containing immigrant Filipino-American students revealed differences between classrooms in communication strategies and patterns. Teacher-student interactions in the bilingual classroom somewhat reflected those found in the Philippine setting, promoting greater…

This report provides information on how Hawaii's students performed on the 1987 and 1988 administrations of the Stanford Writing Assessment (which was adopted as part of Hawaii's Statewide Testing Program). Included in the report are a state summary of the performance of students in grades 3, 6, 8, and 10 and an analysis of the assessment results…

In 1998 for the first time, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) administered a writing assessment at the state level. This report describes the writing achievement of Hawaii eighth-grade students and compares their overall performance to students in the West region of the United States and the nation (using data from the NAEP…

The 1998 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) state level reading assessment measured fourth- and eighth-grade students' reading proficiency in situations that involved reading for three purposes: reading for literary experience, reading to gain information, and reading to perform a task (grade 8 only). This report describes the…

This report provides selected results from the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for Hawaii's public-school students at grades 4 and 8. Since 1992, reading has been assessed in four different years at the state level (at grade 4 in 1992 and 1994, and at both grades 4 and 8 in 1998 and 2002). Hawaii participated in all of…

Introduction: The Maui Hawaii Educational consortium (the Maui School District and Maui Community College) sought scientifically based evidence for the effectiveness of the Cognitive Tutor (CT) Algebra I Curriculum to inform adoption decisions. Decision makers were particularly interested in whether the use of the CT program affects achievement of…

In 1990, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) included a Trial State Assessment (TSA); for the first time in the NAEP's history, voluntary state-by-state assessments were made. The sample was designed to represent the 8th grade public school population in a state or territory. In 1996, 44 states, the District of Columbia, Guam,…

The School Within-A-School (SWS) Project was initiated during the 1970-71 school year with the Waimanalo School seventh graders who have now completed their second year with the project as eighth graders. The major goals of the SWS program rested on the assumption that students in Waimanalo have particular needs created by limited experimential…