Locus of control, a psychological construct, has been the focus of attention in recent decades. Psychologists have discussed the effect of locus of control on achieving life goals in social/psychological interactions. While learning a foreign language involves both social interactions and psychological processes, the role and relation of locus of…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represent the first time that nearly every state has set common expectations for what students should know and be able to do. In the past, each state set its own standards, and the results varied widely. And while states collectively developed these common standards, decisions about the curriculum and…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, in its aim to align diverse state curricula and improve educational outcomes, calls for K-12 teachers in the United States to engage all students in mathematical problem solving along with reading and writing complex text through the use of rigorous academic content. Until recently, most teacher…

Adolescent literacy, or adolescents' ability to read, write, and communicate about the variety of texts they encounter in and out of school, has remained inordinately, and consistently, low for the past 20 years (NCES, 2010). Self-efficacy is a widely-used construct for measuring and predicting student achievement (Pajares, Johnson, & Usher,…

This study examined the relationship between fifth-grade students' out-ofschool reading habits and measures of their reading comprehension and writing abilities. The sample was composed of forty-two students attending an urban school in Northeastern Massachusetts. Each morning, for fifteen consecutive weeks, students recorded an approximation of…

This research involved a 14-month qualitative case study of a fourth-grade bilingual class embarking on a one-to-one netbook computer initiative. Students in this program had unlimited use of the netbooks during the school day. The main foci of the data collected were student achievement, teacher instruction, and student and teacher perceptions of…

Community colleges are a large part of the nation's higher education system and provide an important access point to post-secondary education for many students. Transfer to a four-year institution is one of the many functions served by community colleges. Despite the importance of the transfer function, the process of transferring between higher…

The College Board College Readiness Pathway is an assessment system that measures the reading, writing and mathematical knowledge and skills that students need to be on track to graduate high school college-ready. It consists of ReadiStep[TM], administered in grade eight; the PSAT/NMSQT[R], administered in grades 10-11; and the SAT[R],…

It has been reported in the literature that the disparities of student achievement within schools are often larger than the disparity across schools. In the secondary school context, analysing student achievement data at department level enables a fine-grained approach to identifying particular departments and teachers within them that are…

The Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy (CYAAA), which began operation as part of the government schooling system in 2010, incorporates activities across three overlapping "domains": Class--the formal schooling component; Culture--Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural knowledge; and Club--sporting, cultural, music and physical…

This Striving Readers evaluation examined the impact of a targeted intervention for struggling adolescent readers in participating schools. This study was conducted in nine high schools in nine school districts serving large percentages of at-risk students in Kentucky. The targeted intervention for struggling readers was the Kentucky Cognitive…

Data is reported as percentages based on proficiency in the subject. "Low-income" on this data sheet means students who qualify for the National School Lunch Program. Reading data is from 2009 National Center for Education Statistics assessments and writing data is from 2002 and 2007. A brief list of references and resources is included.

Moderate to high percentages of Wake County Public School (WCPSS) students demonstrated grade-level performance on K-5 assessments in 2009-10. Results indicate very slight changes from prior years. The percentage of students proficient in reading book level and mathematics strands increased very slightly since 2007-08. Modest declines in…

Because learning to meditate shares important qualities with learning to be a better reader and writer--for example, dispassionate noticing, becoming more aware of inner processes, a faith in inner wisdom, effort made with a light touch, the cultivation of a practice through simple, regular doing--practice in mindfulness meditation was used to…

This case study and problem analysis was an in-depth investigation of the half-day/full-day kindergarten model by utilizing interviews and focus groups to provide insight from parents, teachers, and other district personnel as to how the model has impacted the social, emotional, and academic development of the participating students. This study…