This study addressed the issue of low reading proficiency in Kentucky's students with disabilities, potentially exacerbated by post-third-grade curriculum changes. This quasi-experimental ex post facto comparative study aims to determine differences in the grade four reading achievement gap in students with disabilities compared to students…

"Magnetic Reading" is an evidence-based reading comprehension program for students in grades 3 through 5 built on four pedagogical pillars: knowledge-rich learning, culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, scaffolds to support learner variability, and data to inform instruction. This study uses a prospective matched comparison…

Growing evidence warns about the detrimental effects of the stress induced by natural disasters on learning outcomes. Yet less is known about how political leadership could mitigate the adverse exposure to these events. Exploiting a natural experiment--the massive 2010 earthquake in Chile--as an exogenous shock and using fine-grained student data,…

Much research has been conducted on teacher retention, student absences, and suspensions. The results of this research have been shaping the education of primary students. Through standardized or achievement tests, instructional leaders determine each student's level of intellectual knowledge. This knowledge is determined through reading, math,…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results have long displayed student achievement in two ways: as points on a stable vertical scale that typically runs from 0 to 300 or 500 and as the percentages of test takers whose scores reach or surpass a trio of "achievement levels." These achievement levels--dubbed…

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, students returned to the classroom facing heightened challenges. Students lacked motivation, struggled with increased mental health issues, and required social emotional learning. As teachers worked extensively to close deep academic deficits, they dealt with barriers such as increased behaviors that caused…

At the level of the 50 U.S. states, an interconnected nexus of well-being variables exists. These variables strongly correlate with estimates of state IQ in interesting ways. However, the state IQ estimates are now more than 16 years old, and the state well-being estimates are over 12 years old. Updated state IQ and well-being estimates are…

Math facts are foundational for later math skill development, but many students demonstrate difficulties with math facts in early schooling. Drill-based interventions have been shown to effectively target foundational academic skills; however, there is limited research examining drill-based interventions for teaching math facts compared to basic…

Underachievement in education and the exploration of its factors have been in constant interest in educational research for years. According to McFarland et al., 2017) previously conducted research has found a relationship between family risk factors and negative educational outcomes which include low academic achievement, student retention, and…

This study investigates the relationship between mastery goal performance and achievement on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. With policies like the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) placing increased importance on standardized-state assessments, schools are making efforts to improve scores, often by focusing…

The purpose of this ex-post facto quantitative study was to compare English Language Arts (ELA) and math Tennessee Compressive Assessment Program (TCAP) scores of students in grades four through eight who attended school virtually or in-person during the 2020-2021 school year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school district in this study allowed…

This quantitative, causal-comparative research study investigated whether school configuration has an impact on the reading performance of sixth-grade students by comparing the End-of-Grade (EOG) reading assessment Grade Level Proficiency (GLP) scores of sixth-grade students in K-8 configured schools to sixth-grade students enrolled in 6-8 grade…

The purpose of this quantitative, ex post facto study was to determine the difference in students' LEAP ELA achievement scores in grades 3-5 based on the teacher's level of dyslexia knowledge. This study used the Phonological Deficit Theory (PDT) and the Criterion Referenced Assessment Theory (CRT) as its foundation. PDT describes the levels of…

This study compared students' performance on Istation, a computer-based progress-monitoring tool, and easyCBM, a paper-pencil progress-monitoring tool. Participants included 106 students in Grades K-6 from a rural school in New Mexico. Teachers in these grade levels administered both assessments three times during the school year. Results…

Concerns about the negative effects of digitalization on students' reading comprehension, empirically backed by recent meta-analyses, question the efficacy of digital tools in the language arts classroom. By analyzing data from 4 and 8th grade US students from NAEP 2017, we aimed to test the generalization of the negative association between…