This dissertation seeks to answer the question: what were the social and cultural effects of Rudolf Flesch's thoughts and writings on late 20th-century American literacy education? The purpose is to provide an understanding and articulation of the cultural and educational ramifications of Rudolph Flesch's books "Why Johnny Can't Read and What…

Successful reading comprehension is not a guarantee, even for highly skilled readers. When comprehension fails, the ability of the reader to recognize the failure may be critical to avoiding "mis"comprehension (i.e., false confidence in an inaccurate text representation) and to taking steps to improve comprehension. Generally, people…

The manner in which school leaders and teachers respond to students at risk for reading failure impacts whether grade-level expectations are met. The study filled a gap in research which called for school districts to take a serious look at Response to Intervention (RTI) practices to understand how and why certain factors impact teachers'…

Some students still reach secondary level schooling without proficient foundational reading skills. Students who struggle to decode words accurately and efficiently will fail to adequately access grade-level texts independently, furthering the gap between themselves and their peers. Despite a subgroup of students reaching high school with word…

Readers read for different purposes and the texts they read vary in topic and difficulty. These situational factors influence standards of coherence--how much understanding a reader aims to have for a given text. Three studies examined whether individual differences in reader-based standards of coherence influenced off-line and on-line…

This qualitative exploratory case study focused on seventh and eighth grade teachers and a school principal's opinions and experiences to better understand why students' reading performances were failing in one public charter school in New Jersey and to provide solutions and recommendations for enhancing students' reading performance. Four…

Reading is a fundamental skill which changes the achievement trajectory of students, particularly in low-income communities. Children who cannot read proficiently by the upper elementary grades are at-risk for a multitude of poor outcomes, and disparities in the literacy performance of students from culturally and linguistically diverse…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the Read 180 program as a Response to Intervention reading strategy tool for middle school students. This study explored the effect of the RtI-designed technology-based reading program on seventh and eighth-grade students labeled as at-risk for reading failure. Data was analyzed using the…

The local district in this study has not made adequate yearly progress in the past several years in language arts literacy on state assessments. Particularly problematic were poor reading skills among district students. Poor literacy skills negatively affect student learning across the curriculum. The purpose of this case study was to identify…

Teaching a child to read is one of the greatest gifts we can give to that individual and to society as a whole, and yet many students exit school without the necessary literacy skills. For decades, research has demonstrated the importance of phonemic awareness in the development of the alphabetic principle, a prerequisite for competent reading,…

This study compares native English, Spanish, Lao, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, and all other ELL students over one, two, three, and four-year spans to determine if certain groups appear to face more difficulties in developing early reading mastery by third grade. This study also examines whether socio-economic status impacts the…

This quantitative, quasi-experimental study investigated the reading achievement of students at-risk of failure to learn to read. This study analyzed the effectiveness of the reading intervention program, Reading Success, which is used with at-risk first grade students in an elementary school district in DuPage County, Illinois. The Reading…

This study investigated the effect of explicit teaching of comprehension strategies on the comprehension performance of elementary school students. Two schools with similar demographics, including a significant proportion of students at risk for reading failure, participated in the study. One school utilized an explicit comprehension strategy…

Students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD) present considerable academic challenges along with emotional and/or behavioral problems. In terms of reading, these students typically perform one-to-two years below grade level (Kauffman, 2001). Given the strong correlation between reading failure and school failure and overall success…

Reading Recovery (RR), an early intervention reading program, is designed to push a lagging learner to accelerate. In this study, the researcher compared reading comprehension and fluency growth for struggling first graders who participated in a traditional reading program only as compared to those in a traditional program plus a RR program. The…