"Reading First is the most effective federal program in history." So reads the opening line of a report that Alabama superintendent of education Joseph Morton sent to his congressional delegation last June, in which he recounts how the program has raised reading achievement for poor students in his charge. Morton's view is shared by…

This report reviews achievement gaps in both reading and math between ELL and non-ELL students in Arizona over the post-Proposition 203 period 2005-2009 and during the first year of implementation of the 4 hour ELD block, 2008-09. The study finds that Arizona has made little to no progress in closing the achievement gap between ELL and non-ELL…

Notes the author was a member of the Arizona Reading Achievement Task Force, established by state law to report on how to implement the "phonics law" passed the year before. Presents the minority report, which outlines some principles of achieving reading excellence and which was not included in the Task Force's report. Suggests keeping…

Data drawn from the Arizona statewide testing program were used to relate selected factors to third-grade reading achievement in a representative sample of 50 school districts. Analyses of scores on the Metropolitan Achievement Test indicated that reading scores were positively related to the average market value of single residences within the…

Project HEED's (Heed Ethnic Education Deplorization) main emphasis in 1974-75 was to develop reading and cultural awareness skills for kindergarten through 4th grades in the 7 project schools on American Indian reservations in Arizona. In its 4th year of operation, the project (funded under Elementary and Secondary Education Title III) involved…

The 1998 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) state level reading assessment measured public and nonpublic fourth- and eighth-grade students' reading proficiency in situations that involved reading for three purposes: reading for literary experience, reading to gain information, and reading to perform a task (grade 8 only). This…

This report provides selected results from the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for Arizona's public-school students at grades 4 and 8. Since 1992, reading has been assessed in four different years at the state level (at grade 4 in 1992 and 1994, and at both grades 4 and 8 in 1998 and 2002). Arizona participated in all of…