Underachievement among gifted students is a paradox that frustrates educators because of the significant disparity between students' potential and their performance. Complicating the issue is the highly individualized nature of the underperformance, which must take into consideration factors of student culture, socio-economic status, motivation,…

A phenomenological case study by Counsell (2007) explored and investigated the phenomenon of what happened as Florida's A+ Plan intersected with the life histories of one beginning African American female third grade teacher and one veteran White female third grade teacher at demographically different school communities in one Florida school…

The need to adequately prepare all students for the next stage in their lives has led a number of states to adopt new educational standards that reflect the expectation that all high school students will be ready for college and career when they graduate. The report "Communicating College and Career Readiness through Proficiency…

This case study conducted with 1,425 middle school students in Palm Beach County, Florida, included a treatment group receiving GIS instruction (256) and a control group without GIS instruction (1,169). Quantitative analyses on standardized test scores indicated that inclusion of GIS in middle school curriculum had a significant effect on student…

Current federal legislation holds schools accountable for ensuring that all students, including those with disabilities, make adequate yearly progress on academic achievement measures, while also including students with disabilities in general education settings whenever possible. Schools are thus expected to be both excellent and equitable in…

Through comparative case study, we seek to understand the ways in which actors in high schools use and think about performance data. In particular, we compare data use in higher and lower value-added schools. Data use is conceptualized here as having access to a host of available performance data on students, using them to guide instructional…

Four organizations with promising practices in teacher Professional Growth & Support have significantly raised outcomes for low-income students. The charter management networks, Achievement First and Aspire Public Schools, and the two reform organizations, Teach Plus and Agile Mind, have successfully increased student achievement with a…

The educational accountability systems of both the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 and the state of Florida (as of 1999) were modeled after Texas' system, despite its flaws. NCLB reaches for all students to achieve academic proficiency and designates students with limited English proficiency (LEP) as an important subgroup. As we work with…

This study focuses on three case studies of three Florida teachers' action research projects focusing on improving at-risk students' literacy skills through innovative instructional technology, culturally-relevant poetry and bilingual teaching. The teachers, White, African American and Latina, describe their research journeys, the literacy…

Achievement outcomes for students participating in a school counselor-led Student Success Skills intervention were investigated. Students in Grades 4 and 5 in a single school participated in the action research. Achievement outcomes were measured using the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Students who participated in the intervention showed…

The purpose of this descriptive, post hoc single case study was to understand how the five components of Teddlie and Stringfield's (1993) school effectiveness model manifested themselves in school improvements efforts. This study used Teddlie and Stringfield (1993) five component school effectiveness conceptual model (focus on academics, orderly…

As a co-author of the GEAR-UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) grant proposal to the Department of Education in 1999, the primary author (Kohl) of this paper is in her third year of working at Franklin Middle School, which largely serves at-risk minority students through the University of South Florida (USF),…

Singing exaggerates the language of reading. The students find their voices in the rhythm and bounce of language by using music as an alternative technological approach to reading. A concurrent mixed methods study was conducted to investigate the use of an interactive sing-to-read program Tune Into Reading (Electronic Learning Products, 2006)…

Measuring History complements the cases presented in Wise Social Studies Practices (Yeager & Davis, 2005). Yeager and Davis highlight the rich and ambitious teaching that can occur in the broad context of state-level testing. In this book, the chapter authors and I bring the particular state history tests more to the fore and examine how…