This practicum was designed to use directed writing strategies to teach writing skills to middle grades language arts students who frequently failed to make average or above scores in essay writing assignments. The program included three specific strategies. The first strategy was to teach higher-order thinking and metacognitive strategies related…

English language learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities are two groups specifically targeted in NCLB for which schools must demonstrate "adequate yearly progress." However, ELLs with disabilities, a category where these two groups overlap, are not specifically mentioned in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Students with…

In response to the accountability movement, schools must develop appropriate data sources and use them for decision making. This paper describes a data-collection and data-analysis procedure that can be used at the school building level. The process uses software for survey administration and data analysis for conducting practical automated…

A study examined a joint service project undertaken by two Georgia State University (GSU) English department faculty members interested in studying distance learning technology. GSU's system uses fiber optics and technology to connect learners at a remote site to a teacher. The project involved assisting in preparing gifted students in grades 6-8…

This practicum intervention was designed to improve the effectiveness of a middle school's interdisciplinary teams. While the school's sixth grade teams were judged to be effective in implementing the district's philosophy, two seventh grade and two eighth grade teams, composed of 18 teachers and 588 students, were among 70 interdisciplinary teams…

A survey of 136 junior high and middle school teachers focused primarily on teachers' knowledge about and opinions relative to curriculum and teaching strategies appropriate for the early adolescent or transescent. The teachers came from four states (Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania), taught in schools in four socio-economic settings, and…

Key results and conclusions from the first year (1986-87) of the Detroit (Michigan) Effective Schools Project are presented. The project was designed to determine how low-achieving schools in Detroit can best be helped and to ascertain factors with greatest impact on retention and achievement. Focus is on assisting selected schools designated as…

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a program evaluation conducted to examine the effectiveness of the Schools Attuned program in a north Texas school district. Schools Attuned was developed by a professor of pediatrics, Dr. Mel Levine (2002), as a professional development model to train teachers to identify cognitive and…

This study described a program designed to increase student reading comprehension in order to improve academic achievement. The targeted population consisted of third and eighth grade students in two schools located in Northern Illinois. Evidence for the existence of the problem included scores from the Stanford Test, low academic performance on…

This final report describes the activities of the Reinventing Schools Research Project, a project that investigated how the inclusion of students with severe and other disabilities merges with larger efforts of educators, administrators, and parents to restructure and reform schools and how to influence the direction of that merger. The project…

This study examined the hypothesis that prior experience with augmented-quotient problems would positively influence performance on remainder-only problems and quotient-only problems. Analysis of sixth through eighth grade students' (n=545) responses to test forms that systematically varied the order of appearance of these three division problems,…

This is an abstract for an action research project report on improving student motivation. Students struggle with motivation to perform well in school. This study was designed to increase student motivation in the classroom setting. The targeted population consisted of one third grade classroom, one fourth grade classroom, and three periods of…

The Accelerated Math and Science (AMS) Project is a 3 year program funded by the California Migrant Education Program Improvement Program. It targets 6th, 7th, and 8th grade low-achieving migrant students who are 2 to 4 years behind their language peer group. Two questions guided the second year evaluation study for the Region IX Migrant Education…

A study examined the status of reading in Indiana's public schools. Questionnaires were returned by 460 of the state's 615 public middle, junior, and senior high schools. Results indicated that: (1) new book acquisitions in Indiana's school library media center book collections were only about one-fourth of the recommended number needed to keep…

Attitudes of middle grade science teachers toward use of hands-on science were examined through the use of a 12 question Likert scale survey. The population consisted of Georgia Southwestern College Graduate School Division of Education students attending the Fall Quarter, 1993. Subjects selected were teachers who had taught or were currently…