In this study, we applied the technique of piecewise linear regression to a total of 144 schools with the third to fifth grades, aimed to search for a turning point at each grade level in terms of the effects of school renewal on school reading and mathematics achievement. We did find a turning point for each school subject at each grade level,…

Stagnant standardized test scores keep literacy achievement at the forefront of national education discussions. Increased conversations about the science of reading have propelled investigations into different types of phonics instruction. However, questions still linger such as "Which strategies are most effective for which students?",…

Around 6% of U.K. children are underachieving at school relative to their potential (URP). We explored whether difficulties with phonological decoding, short-term memory (STM), and complex grammar may be responsible. We compared school-based reading test data or formal SATs, and verbal reasoning in 2462 children (150 URP and 2312 non-URP children)…

Background/Purpose: Before school exercise programs (BSEPs) give students time for breakfast and add time to their daily physical activity. However, the effects of BSEP on physical fitness and academic achievement in the classroom remain unclear. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of BSEP on cardiorespiratory fitness and academic…

Background: Parents play a crucial role in supporting children's literacy, especially in the first years of school. However, parents can find this challenging if they struggle with reading themselves. We explore whether family learning phonics courses boost parents' reading-related skills and ability to support their children's reading, in a…

Although the majority of elementary school teachers cover all major subjects in self-contained classrooms, a growing number of teachers specialize in teaching fewer subjects to higher numbers of students. We use administrative data from Indiana to estimate the effect of teacher specialization on teacher and school effectiveness in elementary…

Background: Rural learners face severe reading challenges that are unique to their environment. The challenges include parents' low level of education, little or no parental support, lack of reading material, and parents' low socio-economic status. It is therefore important that rural education research highlights these challenges in order to help…

The contribution of reading self-concept (RSC) to reading comprehension in Hebrew elementary school students was examined with respect to grade level (second, fifth, and sixth graders) and students' level of reading comprehension (poor, average, and good). RSC questionnaire and reading measures were delivered to 49 second graders and 48 fifth and…

Purpose: We examined the extent to which achievement goals predict reading comprehension, measured by two response formats (free recall and constructed response), and how these relations differ for students with and without reading difficulties (RD). We further explored how executive functions (working memory and semantic verbal fluency) mediate…

The present study examined Latinx school readiness and 3rd grade student achievement, considering differences based on social categories of gender, race, ethnicity, and home language. The sample included 683 racially diverse children (M[subscript age] = 4.94; SD = 0.57) of Dominican- or Mexican-origin from Spanish-English or Spanish-only…

Classical conceptualisations of self-regulated learning typically ignore the role of teaching strategies in real-world classrooms. Therefore, the present exploratory study aimed to examine the different clusters of perceived teaching strategies and students' metacognitive knowledge and experiences, and motivation. The data came from 6365 (49.63%…

Background: The unprecedented access to information in the 21st century entails a deep understanding of information and communication technology (ICT)-related factors in education and their impacts on learning and teaching. The role of attitudes towards ICT is a proven factor in student achievement. However, there is no consensus about the…

Acceleration of digital communication has changed the nature of reading and young people today need to engage multimodal skills for reading success in the digital world. While historically there have been social justice issues for marginalised students in terms of reading, the digital age is creating new equity issues across the globe. This…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program only reports state-level subgroup results if it samples at least 62 students identifying with the subgroup. Since some subgroups constitute small proportions of many states' general student populations, these minority subgroups are seldom sufficiently sampled to meet this sample size…

It is now well established that the COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating and unequal impact on student achievement. Test score declines were disproportionately large for historically marginalized students, exacerbating preexisting achievement gaps and threatening educational and economic inequality. In this paper, we use longitudinal student-level…