The growing number of students whose primary language does not match the language of their schools and a steadily growing performance gap has prompted widespread attention to support emergent literacy gains for those students. This study randomly assigned schools in a Southwestern U.S. state with English language learners (ELLs) in kindergarten…

Results from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) garner considerable attention in the media, academia, and among policy makers. Although there is widespread recognition that ILSAs can provide useful information, there is debate about what types of comparisons are the most meaningful and what could be done to assure more sound…

Forty families with four- to five-year-old Chinese children were chosen as experiment participants and equally divided into four groups for an eight-week parent-child reading experiment in different reading modes. (1) Groups A, B, and C read one of three kinds of Chinese-English audio bilingual picture books respectively: touch reading books,…

International surveys of student achievement are becoming increasingly popular with governments around the world, as they try to measure the performance of their country's education system. The main reason for this trend is the shared opinion that countries will need to be able to compete in the "knowledge economy" to assure the economic…

In this study, we test the assimilation thesis by comparing the academic achievement between native students and first and second generation immigrant pupils. It is the first empirical study that systematically analyzes the native-immigrant achievement gap in Japan. Although numerous studies have examined the achievement gap, most of them are…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate the impact of one-to-one technology on the reading growth of students. In this study, one-to-one technology is specifically Apple iPads and reading growth was measured by analyzing the Northwest Evaluation Associations (NWEA) standardized test known as MAP (Measures of Academic…

Reading for personal interest and acquiring and using information using various reading processes are important parts of reading literacy that students need to develop in order to progress successfully through their schooling and fully function in the information society. Computer assisted reading instructional activities are assumed useful in…

The purpose of this study was to compare the long-term effects of 2 first-grade Response to Intervention (RTI) models (Dynamic and Typical RTI) on the reading performance of students in second and third grade. Participants included 419 first-grade students (352 in second grade and 278 in third grade after attrition). Students were classified based…

Austin ISD is one of 21 US urban school districts participating in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA). AISD students consistently perform well on the 4th and 8th grade reading and math assessments. This research brief summarizes 2015 results. A separate supplemental report also was…

Effect sizes are commonly reported for the results of educational interventions. However, researchers struggle with interpreting their magnitude in a way that transcends generic guidelines. Effect sizes can be interpreted in a meaningful context by benchmarking them against typical growth for students in the normative distribution. Such benchmarks…

This study investigated the complexity of leveled passages used in four classroom reading assessments. A total of 167 passages leveled for Grades 1-6 from these assessments were analyzed using four analytical tools of text complexity. More traditional, two-factor measures of text complexity found a general trend of fairly consistent across-grade…

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate whether a diagnostic testing condition leads to stereotype threat effects for African American and Latina/o children (N = 81) when tested together at an urban elementary school in Miami, Florida. Design/methodology/approach: To analyze the effect of stereotype threat on participants' reading test…

School moves are common during elementary school in the United States. The authors address whether changing schools and residences affects the academic and behavioral development of young students. Utilizing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the regression analyses show that, after controlling for prior achievement and behavior,…

The Kauffman School is a public charter school serving students from low-income neighborhoods in Kansas City, Missouri. This paper used a matched comparison group design to estimate the impacts of the Kauffman School on student achievement, attendance, and suspensions. We found that the Kauffman School had large positive impacts on student…

We compared year-long gains in fluency and comprehension in grades 3-5 in 3 treatment and 4 comparison schools. Treatment schools implemented a comprehensive school reform (CSR) program called Bookworms. The program employed challenging text and emphasized high text volume, aggressive vocabulary and knowledge building, and contextualized strategy…