Almost half of Tennessee's students are not on grade level in reading and math by the time they complete third grade, and very few of those students achieve proficiency in later grades. To combat this trend and support the skill development and academic achievement of all students, Tennessee has adopted a framework for addressing individual…

Alaska's School Climate and Connectedness Survey (SCCS) is a statewide survey developed by American Institutes for Research (AIR) in partnership with the Association of Alaska School Boards (AASB) in 2006. Through student and staff responses, it measures positive school climate, how connected students feel to adults and peers, social and emotional…

A major focus of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study has been the search for characteristics of exemplary schooling in varied economic contexts. In this paper differential results of analyses of effective, typical, and ineffective schools in middle and low socioeconomic neighborhoods are presented. Implications for practitioners and for…

Students with significant cognitive disabilities are eligible to participate in two statewide testing options for accountability: alternate assessments or general assessments with appropriate accommodations. Participation guidelines are generally quite vague, leading to students "switching" test participation between years. In this…

How many students repeat a grade each year? How do retention rates vary across states and over time? Despite extensive research on the predictors and consequences of grade retention, there is no systematic way to quantify state-level retention rates; even national estimates rely on imperfect proxy measures. We present a conceptually simple…

Computers are now a ubiquitous part of US elementary school education. With policy reports suggesting that inequities in information and communication technology (ICT) access across US schools are a thing of the past, investigating how such resources and their use may nonetheless continue to vary becomes all that much more important. Through a…

Historically, researchers have identified that reading outcomes for students in upper grades who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) have typically rested around the late 3rd to early 4th grade. In recent years, wide-scale state-level testing has called into question these prognostications. The authors conducted a descriptive, multiunit,…

Educational leaders struggle with how to develop and sustain an effective, current and affordable educational technology program that meets the needs of the 21st Century learner and increases teaching and learning effectiveness. Thus, this study aimed to extend the research and provide practical guidelines to assist leaders in sustaining an…

This study was conducted in order to identify the major reading, cognitive, and linguistic skills that contribute to individual differences in performance on the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) at third, seventh, and tenth grades. The authors were also interested in understanding the primary deficiencies in…

This report, submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, contains summary details of Delaware students' growth in the areas of reading, mathematics, writing, science and social studies. The results reported herein are part of a long-term effort to gather data on Delaware students' educational progress and use the data to inform decisions about…