Both school and district administrators use the results of standardized, large-scale tests to inform decisions about the need for, or success of, educational programs and interventions. However, test results at the school level are subject to random fluctuations due to changes in cohort, test items, and other factors outside of the school's…

The primary aim of this study was to assess the relations between concurrent, cumulative, and contextual intradistrict school mobility and early reading achievement. Longitudinal administrative school records were used for an entire cohort of students in a large urban district from first through third grade. Findings indicated that students with a…

Purpose: Researchers have developed a constellation model of decodingrelated reading disabilities (RD) to improve the RD risk determination. The model's hallmark is its inclusion of various RD indicators to determine RD risk. Classification methods such as logistic regression (LR) might be one way to determine RD risk within the constellation…

Idaho uses the English Language Arts and Mathematics tests from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) for the Idaho Standard Achievement Tests (ISAT). ISAT results have been have been reported almost exclusively as "percent proficient" statistics (i.e., the percentage of Idaho students who performed at the "A" level…

Gender achievement gaps on national and state assessments have been a popular research topic over the last few decades. Many prior studies examine these gaps in different subjects (e.g., mathematics, reading, and science) and grades (typically kindergarten through eighth grade) for students living in various regions (typically states or countries)…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine what correlation exists between a student's poverty coefficient and the daily number of minutes provided for independent reading and third grade reading achievement level as measured by California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) in small, rural school…

Spending limited educational budgets on technology for classrooms is a strategy many school districts have used to increase student achievement (Levenson, Baehr, Smith, & Sullivan, 2014). In recent years, the technology movement allowed for arbitrary purchasing of devices with little to no pedagogical planning for how technology device usage…

Although spelling skill progress has typically been studied within the context of students' responses to written story starters (Deno, Marsten, & Mirkin, 1982; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2011; Hosp, Hosp, & Howell, 2007; Shinn & Shinn, 2002), there has been little research conducted within a curriculum-based measurement framework that has…

Students living in poverty are now the majority of the K-12 student population in the United States. Growing up in poverty results in lower self-regulation, executive function, and readiness to learn. Researchers suggest that mindfulness practices, such as yoga, can enhance student self-regulation and executive function, thereby increasing student…

Schools must help all students achieve. Leaders who understand the elements of culture and their impact on an organization can be very effective. In 2015, as part of a strategy to cultivate healthy school cultures, the State of Michigan deployed a new self-reporting school culture inventory as part of each school's annual reporting. In this…

Value-added assessment methods have been criticized by researchers and policy makers for a number of reasons. One issue includes the sensitivity of model results across different outcome measures. This study examined the utility of incorporating multivariate latent variable approaches within a traditional value-added framework. We evaluated the…

Purpose: This study investigated the academic achievement and physical activity differences between types of activity breaks implemented in elementary school classrooms. This study evaluated whether there was a difference between the impact of purely aerobic-based movement breaks and the impact of academic-based breaks on children's academic…

The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to evaluate the long-term effects of Florida's Third-Grade Retention policy on low performing students' subsequent academic performance as measured by FCAT reading scores. The study included a random stratified sample of 1500 retained third graders for failure to meet Florida's…

Students who acquire reading comprehension using arts integration will have the opportunity to improve their ability to learn through the following subjects writing, science, language arts, social studies, and mathematics. The problem is economically disadvantaged third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students did not make adequate yearly gains or pass…

Although research supports the effectiveness of the multitiered system of supports (MTSS) on academic and behavioral outcomes, districts aim to engage in data-based decision making and examine the effectiveness of their own MTSS implementation. This case study describes how one regional education service agency (RESA) in the Midwest implemented…