The ongoing literacy crisis in the U.S. highlights an urgent need for effective, scalable literacy instruction. REED Charitable Foundation (RCF) is a non-profit organization that provides structured literacy training informed by Orton-Gillingham, along with ongoing professional coaching and comprehensive implementation support to help all students…

This study was designed to examine relationships between student perceptions of school effectiveness and student achievement in mathematics and reading. Data were collected from over 350 middle school students in a large southeastern school district in the United States. The results revealed statistically significant correlations among the…

Children with stronger self-regulation skills generally demonstrate greater overall success in school both academically and socially. However, there are few valid and reliable measures of self-regulation in middle elementary school. Such a measure could help identify whether a child is truly having difficulties. Thus, the Remembering Rules and…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational research was to investigate to what extent 2007 performance of third grade students who had been retained in 2006 for failing to attain proficiency on the Reading and Mathematics Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) predicted their performance in 2010 on the sixth grade Reading and Mathematics…

To determine whether teachers, on average, improve in their effectiveness as they gain experience in the teaching profession, this brief summarizes the key findings from a critical review of the relevant research. A renewed look at this research is warranted due to advances in research methods and data systems that match student data with…

Expansion of the use of student test score data to measure teacher performance has fueled recent policy interest in using those data to measure the effects of school administrators as well. However, little research has considered the capacity of student performance data to uncover principal effects. Filling this gap, this article identifies…

Background: Reading attitudes are recognised as an influencing factor on the language and literacy achievement of school age monolingual English-speaking children. The relationship between reading attitudes and achievement in young Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) remains understudied. Purpose: The aim of the current study was to describe…

This article focuses on elementary principals as instructional leaders, as well as public school initiatives and educational accountability in the United States. It presents the methodology, instrumentation, measures of academic achievement in Florida, data collection, and processing procedures. Finally, it presents data analysis, results of the…

Teacher value-added models (VAMs) must isolate teachers' contributions to student achievement to be valid. Well-known VAMs use different specifications, however, leaving policymakers with little clear guidance for constructing a valid model. We examine the sensitivity of teacher value-added estimates under different models based on whether they…

Federal and state legislation focused on closing the achievement gap, have placed emphasis on providing students with teachers who display specific characteristics. While this has been the mandate, many schools still fail to close the achievement gap and research linking specific teacher characteristics with student achievement, validates the…

The authors used a large data set (N = 1,011,549) to examine literacy growth over a single school year comparing general education (GenEd) students to three high-risk subgroups: English language learners (ELL), those with a specific learning disability (LD), and those identified as both LD and ELL (LD-ELL) in students in Grades 3-10. The authors…

Do teachers continue to improve in their effectiveness as they gain experience in the teaching profession? This paper aims to answer that question by critically reviewing recent literature that analyzes the effect of teaching experience on student outcomes in K-12 public schools in the United States. This report reviews 30 studies published within…

The present study was designed to explore the association between preschool academic skills and Grade 3 achievement among a sample of ethnically diverse children from low-income families. Data were collected from a sample of 1,442 low-income, ethnically diverse children in preschool and associated with Grade 3 achievement in reading and…

Background: Reading attitudes are recognised as an influencing factor on the language and literacy achievement of school age monolingual English-speaking children. The relationship between reading attitudes and achievement in young Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) remains understudied. Purpose: The aim of the current study was to describe…

As part of its effective teaching initiative, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with three urban school districts across the U.S. and a group of four charter management organizations to undertake a strategic set of human capital reforms. A key objective of the "Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching" program was to…