Historically, AP Potential™ has used PSAT/NMSQT® scores to identify students who are likely to earn a 3 or higher on a specific AP® Exam--based on research showing moderate to strong relationships between PSAT/NMSQT scores and AP Exam scores (Camara & Millsap, 1998; Ewing, Camara & Millsap, 2006; Zhang, Patel & Ewing, 2014a). For most…

Given the importance of early success in reading and writing, the question of how schools can support children to make progress in these areas is of great interest. This project set out to explore this question by identifying schools that appear to be successful in achieving progress in literacy and asking them how they have gone about this. The…

Since writing ability has been found to be an important predictor of school success and college readiness, it is important for teachers to understand the connections between students' attitudes toward writing, writing self-efficacy, and writing achievement. This article describes the findings from focus groups conducted with 81 students in grades…

National estimates of students' writing abilities in the United States indicate that in 2002, 72% of elementary-aged students were unable to write with grade-level proficiency (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). Although performance feedback is one type of intervention that improves students' writing skills, no study to date has examined…

The same working memory and reading and writing achievement phenotypes (behavioral markers of genetic variants) validated in prior research with younger children and older adults in a multi-generational family genetics study of dyslexia were used to study 81 adolescent and young adults (ages 16 to 25) from that study. Dyslexia is impaired word…

This research was conducted to find out whether or not using short stories significantly improve the speaking and writing achievements. A quasi-experimental study of non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group design or comparison group design was used in this research. The population of this research was the all first semester undergraduate…

The Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program was developed to increase the number of secondary students who participate in rigorous academic courses, to accelerate student learning, and to improve student performance. The AVID program in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) targets students who (1) are in the academic…

English Language Learner (ELL) students in the district's two main bilingual programs (Transitional and Dual Language) are instructed in both English and Spanish. The relative amount of instruction in each language depends on both program and grade level. Students in the Transitional Bilingual Program have the option of entering a pre-exit phase…

The purpose of this project is to identify how entities who have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are addressing this option to add content to the standards. This report describes the policy decisions of adopters on the "15 percent question" as well as reports on and lists any such additional standards they have identified…

Argumentation can contribute significantly to content area learning. Recent research has raised questions about the effects of discussion (deliberation) goals versus persuasion (disputation) goals on reasoning and learning. This is the first study to compare the effects of these writing goals on individual writing to learn. Grade 7 and 8 students…

In this report, we examine the feasibility of characterizing writing performance using process features derived from a keystroke log. Using data derived from a set of "CBAL"™ writing assessments, we examine the following research questions: (a) How stable are the keystroke timing and process features across testing occasions?; (b) How…

High levels of apprehension cause students to have writing difficulties. This study attempted to identify the sources of Egyptian university students' English writing apprehension. The study made use of both quantitative and qualitative data. The scores of 57 students on a writing apprehension scale were compared to their scores on another scale…

The purpose of this work is to analyze the name writing and writing readiness levels of preschoolers in terms of various variables and to identify the relationship between children's name writing skill and writing readiness levels. To that end, name-writing and writing-readiness skills of 204 preschoolers at the ages of 3, 4 and 5 were examined…

Writing is a demanding, multidimensional process that is, cognitively and socially, highly complex. Success in writing is vital to success in education and in the workforce. Writing is increasingly used to demonstrate learning through schooling and has the potential to contribute toward understanding and learning in the content areas. The project…

This research explores the differences in revenue reported after accounting for charter funds passing through district budgets between Florida's traditional schools and charter schools at both the state level and the individual district level. Differences in the percentage of the revenues the schools are expending on instructional services are…