Several national and international studies have indicated that there is an achievement gap between student literary reading and student informational reading, with the gap favoring literary reading. One plausible explanation for this gap is that reading informational text has been neglected in early grades in the U.S. (Dreher, 2003; Kletzien &…

Literature provides consistent evidence that there is a strong relationship between language proficiency and math achievement. However, research results show conflicts supporting either an increasing or a decreasing longitudinal relationship between the two. This study explored a longitudinal data and adopted quantile regression analyses to…

The purpose of the qualitative social constructionist study was to explore the factors that enhance or impede parental involvement of Spanish-speaking Latino parents on both English Language Learners (ELL) and Former English Language Learners (f-ELL) in a Small City School District. According to Krogstad et. al. (2023), the United States Latino…

What is schools' role in the stratification system? One view is that schools are an important mechanism for perpetuating inequality because children from advantaged backgrounds (white and high socioeconomic) enjoy better school learning environments than their disadvantaged peers. But it is difficult to know this with confidence because children's…

The purpose of this study was to determine if reading achievement of students from high-poverty US schools differs as a function of participation in summer tutoring versus access to books. Data from 100 at-risk youth who participated in tutoring (n = 45) or received self-selected books (n = 55) indicated significant gains for students in both…

This research study examined curricular and instructional approaches that help students who receive special education services meet common Illinois state standards as measured by annual state standardized testing. Despite having supportive accommodations and modifications, Illinois students who receive special education services have lagged behind…

This study found that as early as the beginning of kindergarten and before any formal schooling began for most students, the achievement gap already existed. It was mostly related to students' poverty, ELL status, and SWD status, as well as to schools' having larger proportions of economically disadvantaged students. Students from poor families…

Prior research suggests that males outperform females, on average, on multiple-choice items compared to their relative performance on constructed-response items. This paper characterizes the extent to which gender achievement gaps on state accountability tests across the United States are associated with those tests' item formats. Using roughly 8…

In this Forum article, Komatsu and Rappleye report that the results of PISA 2015 released December 2016 revealed a major oddity: reading scores in several of the "leading" East Asian countries had apparently plummeted. An interesting point is that Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong are among the most advanced technological societies in…

Many most well-known charter schools in the United States use a "No Excuses" approach. We conduct the first meta-analysis of the achievement impacts of No Excuses charter schools, focusing on experimental, lottery-based studies. We estimate that No Excuses charter schools increase student math and literacy achievement by 0.25 and 0.17,…

Objective: Accurate estimation of developmental trajectories can inform instruction and intervention. We compared the fit of linear, quadratic, and piecewise mixed-effects models of reading development among students with learning disabilities relative to their typically developing peers. Method: We drew an analytic sample of 1,990 students from…

Background: Student attention is a stable predictor of academic performance, with lower levels of attention associated with poorer grades. Claims about students' attention may better reflect social processes than student deficits. School social workers may be especially situated to address the interaction of child and classroom factors impeding…

Research on gender achievement gaps shows they exist, and are largest in the tails of the distribution, starting as early as Kindergarten and persisting through eighth grade. In mathematics, studies find small average gender achievement gaps and larger systematically male-favoring gaps among the highest achieving students. This paper seeks to…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference between a student's reading/language arts TCAP scale score and his or her lunch status for students in grades three, four, and five within two school systems in Tennessee. The population consisted of 2,442 students who were in grades three, four, and five during the 2014-2015…

The present study examines cross-lagged associations among executive function, visuomotor skills, and math and reading achievement from kindergarten to second grade. Both executive function and visuomotor integration tend to be delayed in socioeconomically disadvantaged children and can explain nearly half the achievement gap at kindergarten…