Improving the reading ability of young students could hardly be a more urgent priority for our elementary schools. Two thirds of American fourth and eighth graders are not able to read proficiently--and the outcomes are far worse for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2019 showed that only…

This brief provides a policy perspective into the recent NWEA research on how COVID-19 has affected student learning. It builds on previous research showing achievement levels stalling over the 2022-23 school year from the previous year. This analysis on student learning from grades 3-8 shows that academic recovery has stalled for older learners…

In light of extensive research demonstrating widespread misconceptions about electricity, this paper describes a learning study that targeted the most likely source of difficulty--failure of middle school pupils to develop a mental model that serves as a bridge between static and current electricity. During the intervention, pupils first envision…

The purpose of this research is to investigate the attitudes of elementary education students towards the use of Smart Board (SB) in lessons. The study is based on the associational survey model from quantitative research methods. The study was conducted on students attending at 4th to 8th grades of three schools, both primary and secondary…

The national government in Malawi implemented an outcomes-based curriculum reform in 2007. To facilitate implementation, new textbooks were developed for the primary school curriculum. This study intended to explore teachers' use and perception of the new Expressive Arts textbooks. The participants consisted of 192 Expressive Arts teachers, grades…

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a whole picture book worth? This was exactly the question Pierce School teachers asked themselves when they began the project of compiling a photo library for creating realistic and relevant short texts by and for students across all grades in their K-8 elementary school. In an effort to…

Eight language curricula that are widely used in the Netherlands for children up to grade 8 were evaluated. Questions examined were: (1) whether the use of a particular curriculum results in greater achievement in specific language areas; (2) what differences and similarities exist among these curricula; (3) do differences exist in the ways in…

A study of math instruction with and without a computer-assisted component (CAI) was conducted to determine the influence of teachers' attitudes on the achievement of 117 seventh-and eighth-grade remedial math students. Results indicate a major role for the teacher's personality in CAI and non-CAI interventions. (TJH)

The relationships between school accreditation variables, socioeconomic status, and student achievement were investigated from standardized reading and mathematics achievement test scores in 38 eighth grade and 74 fifth grade schools. The percentage of children eating a free lunch at school was used to indicate socioeconomic background. School…

To assess the impact of the North Carolina Career Development Plan (CDP) on student achievement, results of the California Achievement Tests, administered annually in North Carolina public schools, were analyzed. The focus was on the performance of children in grades 3, 6, and 8 in the school years from 1985-86 through 1988-89 in 16 CDP units.…

Examined the relationship of friendship quality to adolescent self-esteem over time for seventh and eighth graders (n=279) who completed a questionnaire in fall and spring of a school year. Found that quality and stability of adolescents' friendships are related not only to their self-esteem but also to changes over time in specific areas of…

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…

A total of 72 children from the second, fifth, and eighth grades participated in an investigation of relations between children's moral reasoning about actions considered obligatory and discretionary. Assessments were made of children's evaluations and corresponding justifications of stimuli depicting two helping situations in each of which one…

Investigated 48 fifth- and eighth-grade boys' moral judgments of stories featuring good intentions with bad outcomes. Clear differences in moral judgments were found between groups recruited from the same general social setting that were comparable in intelligence but different in moral and social behavior. (RJC)