The teacher has been identified as one of the most important factors in effecting student achievement. Consequently, school systems across the country engage their teachers in costly and time-consuming professional development in an effort to improve their effectiveness. This study examined whether one such professional development activity, the…

An ongoing study seeks to identify effective curriculum policies and classroom practices in high-performing rural elementary schools that contribute to positive outcomes for students with disabilities and low-income students. Schools in Maryland and Delaware were first ranked by the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-priced meals…

Compared three residual-based methods for indexing school effectiveness using data from elementary schools in Maryland. Results indicate that the hierarchical linear model approach had higher stability across achievement test forms. Results further suggest that when only school-level data are available, the use of either of the school-level models…

Presents the findings of a survey of parents' experiences with different kinds of parent involvement. Views school and family relations from the parents' perspective and suggests that parents favor programs that stress cooperation between school and home. (DR)

This document offers many of the insights and comments of Maryland elementary school teachers who scored the 1992 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) tests. The MSPAP covers reading, writing, social studies, mathematics, and science and is administered to students in grades 3, 5, and 8. The document contains the teachers' most…

This document offers many of the insights and comments of Maryland elementary school teachers who scored the 1993 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) tests. The MSPAP covers reading, writing, social studies, mathematics, and science and is administered to Maryland students in grades 3, 5, and 8. Comments and observations are…

This technical report presents third-year analyses of the progress of five Maryland elementary schools participating in a multi-school, multi-district implementation of the Core Knowledge Curriculum (E. Hirsch, 1987, 1996). Third-year results are presented in the areas of implementation and outcomes. Factors clearly affecting implementation of…

This study explored 330 third- and fifth-grade Maryland students' motivation to read using the Motivation to Read Profile (MRP). The first part of the MRP, a Likert-type, self-report, group-administered questionnaire, was completed by all students. The second part of the MRP, the Conversational Interview, was individually administered to a random…

The Allegany County School System and the Maryland School for the Deaf (MSD) have collaborated to develop a satellite program that brings MSD educational services to hard-of-hearing and deaf elementary students in rural western Maryland. In the past 5 years, the number of hearing-impaired preschoolers in Allegany and Garrett Counties increased…

As part of a research project being conducted to determine the impact that the Maryland Learning Outcomes and the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) are having on classroom instruction and assessment practices, social studies classroom materials were collected from elementary and middle schools in Maryland during the 1997-1998…

In order to measure elementary school teachers' feelings about parent involvement in home learning as a teaching strategy and to see how widespread this strategy is, a survey was conducted with 3,700 first-, third-, and fifth-grade school teachers in most Maryland public schools. (MP)

Teachers and administrators often note that preservice programs do not prepare future teachers adequately to teach reading. Several Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have addressed this problem. In 1997, the Georgia Professional Standards Review Commission began examining reading certification requirements and found that most teacher…

As part of a research project being conducted to determine the impact that the Maryland Learning Outcomes and the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) are having on classroom instruction and assessment practices, science classroom materials were collected from elementary and middle schools in Maryland during the 1997-1998 school…

The Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I Elementary Basic Skills program operated in 72 schools during fiscal year 1973. There were approximately 23,443 identified Title I pupils who received the services of the program. The first major program objective pertains directly to reading comprehension and anticipates a gain of ten school months…

Spatial dependence exists when the variation between observations is dependent on spatial location. In the present study, geostatistical methods were used to examine spatial dependence in adolescents' perceptions of their neighborhoods: whether adolescents living in close proximity perceived their neighborhoods more similarly than adolescents…