When students struggle with reading at the elementary level, their needs are typically met with interventions that focus on word recognition and decoding skills. This same intervention approach is often used to address students who struggle with reading at the middle-school level. The middle school struggling reader accumulates deficits from…

Historically, formative assessment has been credited with increasing student achievement. Student outcomes increase when constructive, immediate, formative feedback is provided in a systematic way for all students. Educators need to implement effective formative assessments in order to deepen learning through more critical thinking and reflection.…

In New Jersey and nationwide, legislative efforts require that schools refocus on teaching social emotional skills in order to meet the holistic needs of students and prevent bullying. However, with an ever-growing list of school requirements, no additional instructional time, and little guidance on how to teach social emotional skills, schools…

Discussing ideologically opposing views of beginning reading, the authors trace the politics of reading curriculum in two racially diverse New Jersey school districts working to raise the literacy achievement of traditionally underserved students through socially just literacy education.

The purpose of this case study was to examine the factors pertaining to socially, economically, and culturally disadvantaged students, and to relate how these factors do not prohibit these students from demonstrating academic progress in literacy if they are provided with additional academic assistance and resources. This study examined roles and…

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education awarded eight Striving Readers grants to projects around the country. The goal of Striving Readers is to improve literacy skills and achievement for struggling readers in middle and high school and to increase the research base using randomized clinical research to address improvement in adolescent…

Rigorous research provides information that will allow other schools and districts to select interventions that have a scientifically based track record of effectiveness. All Striving Reader grants include the mandate to evaluate literacy intervention(s) targeted to adolescents who are reading significantly below grade level. Although all studies…

In this study, Reading Recovery teachers reported the program plans for students who had not successfully discontinued the Reading Recovery program. Despite the existence of policy and monitoring devices in New Jersey, a number of schools did not have plans in place to offer ongoing intensive literacy instruction for their lowest-performing…