Modeling growth for students with significant cognitive disabilities (SWSCD) is difficult due to a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, missing data, test scaling, group heterogeneity, and small sample sizes. These challenges may account for the paucity of previous research exploring the academic growth of SWSCD. Our study represents…

Data collection can be the most time- and cost-intensive part of developmental research. This article describes some long-proposed but little-used research designs that have the potential to maximize data quality (reliability and validity) while minimizing research cost. In "planned missing data designs", missing data are used…

Minnesota Reading Corps (MRC) is the largest AmeriCorps State program in the country. The goal of MRC is to ensure that students become successful readers and meet reading proficiency targets by the end of the third grade. Starting in 2011, the "Corporation for National and Community Service" (CNCS) sponsored a randomized controlled…

This guide is designed to help researchers make sure that their research reports include enough information about study measures so that readers can assess the quality of the study's methods and results. The guide also provides examples of write-ups about measures and suggests resources for learning more about these topics. The guide assumes…

This study examined the impact of the Four Powerful Comprehension Strategies on comprehension achievement and reader self-perception of struggling readers in grades three, four, and five. The study also observed the relationship between the intervention and learning style processing preferences. There is a need for effective reading intervention…

Standardized achievement tests and instructional accomplishment inventories involve different methodologies and cannot be equated by using conventional psychometric methods. Instructional accomplishment inventories are descriptive, and are designed to reflect the scope, sequence, and skills and emphasis in a particular instructional program.…

Criticizes the statistical methods used in a previously published article that compared a commercially produced computer program with traditional teaching methods. Measures of instructional effectiveness are described, the assignment of student pairs is examined, and the use of blocking variables with analysis of variance is discussed. (LRW)

An evaluation of the first year of "The Electric Company" is provided. Volume 1 is comprised of the following chapters: I. Introduction; II. Preparing for the Evaluation (Research Design and Sampling Procedures; Field Operations; The Treatment--the in-school viewing treatment, the at-home viewing treatment, and the content of The…