In response to COVID-19, U.S. students learned remotely from mid-March to June 2020. At the start of academic year 2020--21, many schools remained remote but others--primarily Catholic and other private schools--reopened. We consider Catholic schooling as a proxy for in-person instruction and use national data from Renaissance Star and MAP Growth…

This causal-comparative study analyzed third grade reading scores from the National Center for Education Statistics, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) K-2011, by one of five school types, and four U.S. geographical regions. Forty-one of 50 states were represented. The problem studied is the unexplained elementary reading performance…

Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal--that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas…

This quantitative, correlational-predictive study was performed using publicly available archival data to determine if and to what extent post-COVID-19 relief funding (ESSER III) received by the Arizona public school districts in the 2021-2022 school year had a statistically significant impact on the English Language Arts (ELA) assessment during…

Thanks to rapid increases in the state's Hispanic and Asian populations, the number of Texas students classified as English Learners has surged in the past decade, from approximately 830,000 in 2010 to more than 1.1 million today. In the charter sector, change has been even more rapid. In 2010, 16 percent of charter students in Texas were…

COVID-19 significantly impacted the educational and home environments for students throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia in ways that may have impacted student learning, as measured by standardized exams. We analyze statewide, student-level administrative and assessment data on the Standards of Learning (SOL) reading and math tests for the…

The state of Arkansas adopted ACT 1063 in 2017, which was designed to improve reading achievement for all students. Included in the law was the requirement that "curriculum programs that are supported by the science of reading and based on the instruction that is explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic be implemented (Division of…

YouthTruth is a national survey project that harnesses student and stakeholder feedback to help guide decision-making by school leaders and education funders. With a grant from the Fund for Shared Insight, YouthTruth partnered with SRI Education to examine the relationship between key student experience scales and school-level academic and…

Nationally, public school districts utilize student achievement as the indicator of success or failure. In Texas, student achievement is measured by the yearly State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) assessment in Grades 3 through 12. Existing studies examined mentoring as a way of creating positive change for principals. Much of…

This study examined how students' motivational regulation affects their academic performance based on the self-determination theory (SDT). The research involved data analysis from over 7,056 sixth-grade students in 446 South Korean elementary schools. We applied a stepwise multi-level modeling (MLM) approach to assess the influence of five…

The purpose of this research is to determine whether the achievement gap between Black and White students differs significantly between Minnesota public charter schools and traditional Minnesota public schools. The reading and math proficiency gaps between Black and White students in Minnesota are among the largest in the nation. Despite the fact…

Using a longitudinal data set, this paper examines to what extent school-entry (N = 553; mean age 6.32 years) early mathematics and literacy skills predict students' later achievement in a lower-middle-income country, Kenya. Controlling for socioeconomic status, intervention status, rural versus urban settings and parental literacy, the findings…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has periodically published reports using results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to compare the proficiency standards that states set for their students. Since standards vary across states, the results of the various state assessments cannot be used to directly compare…

Education is often depicted as one of the best ways out of poverty. At the same time, research over many decades finds that most educational outcomes are strongly correlated to poverty. It is not likely that these two themes are true at the same time. Either schools are windows of opportunity and help overcome or mitigate poverty and other…

The purpose of the current research is to determine the effect of changing the English Language Art curriculum on the reading growth of fourth-grade students who attended a public school district located in a suburban community in the Northeastern part of the United States. This ex-post facto study is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the…