This study provides a first look at how student college- and career-readiness have progressed in the early years of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation. It is motivated by concern that changes triggered by the standards transition might be disruptive to student learning in the short run, even when those changes may become…

Federal regulations indicate that the achievement gap must be closed between subgroups, including the gap between special education and non-special education students. We explored the ways in which achievement trends are influenced by three methods of reporting (cross-sectional, cohort-static, and cohort-dynamic). We also investigated (a) the ways…

Motivational constructs and students' engagements have great impacts on students' mathematics achievements, yet they have not been theoretically investigated using international large-scale assessment data. This study utilized the mathematics data of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011 to conduct a comparative and…

The Office of Shared Accountability (OSA) in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) conducted a linking study to examine the relationship of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment with the Common Core Consortia Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment in the 2014-2015 school year. This is the…

The Quiet Time program provides a 15-min period at the beginning and end of the school day where students may practice Transcendental Meditation (TM) or another quiet activity such as reading silently to oneself. This study examined the impact of participating in Quiet Time on ninth-grade students (n?=?141) by comparing their outcomes to those of…

The implementation of education policies requiring the turnaround of persistently low-achieving schools has demanded reforms that will not only improve achievement, but also deliver results in a short period of time. To meet such demands, Jefferson County Public Schools educators implemented Project Proficiency (PP). Results from…

One approach to reducing persistent racial/ethnic achievement gaps is to tackle their social-psychological dimensions, including the negative consequences of stereotype threat and other identity threats in school. Initial research suggested that a particularly promising approach is brief self-affirmation writing exercises for 7th grade students;…

Students with significant cognitive disabilities are eligible to participate in two statewide testing options for accountability: alternate assessments or general assessments with appropriate accommodations. Participation guidelines are generally quite vague, leading to students "switching" test participation between years. In this…

Lexis-based views of second or foreign language (L2) teaching place prime importance on the teaching of conventionalized multi-word lexical items, or unanalyzed chunks, as a useful mechanism for fostering learners' creative production of forms and their subsequent development of L2 competence. This pretest/posttest quasiexperimental study probed…

Background: Although it is well-established that children with language impairment (LI) and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) both show elevated levels of emotional and behavioural problems, the level and types of difficulties across the two groups have not previously been directly compared. Aims: To compare levels of emotional and…

When using time series accountability data to evaluate system-wide education policies, concurrent changes often pose threats to internal validity. The standard difference-in-differences (DID) method resorts to a non-equivalent comparison group whose average outcome change is due to such confounding. This strategy relies on the strong assumption…

Black middle school students in the United States continue to perform poorly on standardized reading achievement tests in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups. The purpose of this research study was to examine the effectiveness of a vocabulary-focused test preparation program for Black middle school students. The theoretical framework…

Every country strives for its students to have advanced achievement in some way, shape, or form. But too often, competence is a higher policy priority than excellence, and shrinking minimum competency gaps is a higher priority than closing excellence gaps. In this brief, educational excellence is defined as the percent of students who meet or…

Above-level testing is the practice of administering aptitude or academic achievement tests that are designed for typical students in higher grades or older age-groups to gifted or high-achieving students. Although widely accepted in gifted education, above-level testing has not been subject to careful psychometric scrutiny. In this study, I…

Problem Statement: The presence of leaders who will lead societies to success is an important gain for a society. In the present time, leadership development has become a strategic requirement. Although there is a common agreement on the need for leadership education, there are few studies on the education process of leadership and the efficacy of…