The achievement gap between middle class white students and black or Hispanic students living in low income households continues to be a persistent problem in education even ten years since the authorization of No Child Left Behind in 2001. This study examined the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme and how students from low income…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the Sing, Spell, Read, Write (SSRW) phonics curriculum that uses explicit and systematic methods and incorporates music to teach literacy skills implemented as a tier-two reading intervention in the Response to Intervention process to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of English…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)'s emphasis of reading, language arts, and mathematics (RLA&M) and its de-emphasis of science has been a source of great concern among educators. Through an objectivist and constructionist framework, this study explored the unforeseen effects of the NCLB on public science education among Title I (TI) and…

Knowing what students should be able to accomplish academically is the first step in knowing how to write accurate Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals. By giving students short Curriculum-Based Measurements (CBM) in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics, teachers are able to determine current level of performance, or baseline. Teachers…

The commentary and overview explored how curriculum and assessment reforms are being used by a small university and small country to improve the quality of education and gain international recognition. Although the reforms are potentially beneficial to the students, university, and country, there are dilemmatic factors that may either enhance or…

Public schools struggle with ways to encourage parental involvement in the classroom. Home and school collaboration is needed if students are to succeed academically. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was a significant difference in the reading achievement of students by the number of workshop sessions attended by parents…

Fingertip Facts is a compendium of some of the most frequently requested data sets from the Utah State Office of Education. Data sets in this year's Fingertip Facts include: Core CRT Language Arts Testing, 2013; Core CRT Mathematics Testing, 2013; 2013 Public Education General Fund; 2012-13 Enrollment Demographics; Public Schools by Grade Level,…

The purpose of the present study was to extend validity research on a content area general outcome measurement tool known as vocabulary matching. Previous research has reported moderately strong to strong correlations between the group-administered vocabulary-matching measure and a standardized assessment instrument. The present study extended the…

Sacked, Borne man, and Connelly recently discussed several criticisms that are often raised against the use of cognitive tests in selection. One criticism concerns the issue of measurement bias in cognitive ability tests with respect to specific groups in society. Sacked et AL. (2008) stated that "absent additional information, one cannot…

A study of the implementation of boy-friendly strategies for teaching writing was conducted in order to determine if the strategies would improve the writing achievement of fifth grade boys, thereby narrowing the gender achievement gap in writing. The strategies were categorized in four modalities: self-efficacy, perception/attitude, performance,…

Educators and policymakers have been concerned about the problem of early literacy performance for many decades. Despite educational reform to increase standards, many children consistently fail to read at levels that enable them to compete globally. The purpose of this study was to provide a data driven program evaluation of a reading…

Social promotion is defined as the practice of allowing students who failed to meet performance standards and academic requirements the opportunity to pass on to the next grade with their peers. Although the A+ Educational Reform Act abolished the use of the practice, social promotion continues to occur in numerous school districts across one…

Collaborative testing has been shown to improve performance but not always content retention. In this study, we investigated whether collaborative testing could improve both performance and content retention in a large, introductory biology course. Students were semirandomly divided into two groups based on their performances on exam 1. Each group…

Reliable criterion-referenced assessments are critical as one of the first steps in evidence-based practice. These assessments must also be valid. One of the most important skills to measure in school-age children with language disabilities is the ability to organize language in the form of narratives. The purpose of this paper is to describe a…

The author uses Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, and habitus to analyze how students, parents, teachers, and administrators are responding to Georgia's test-based grade retention policy in reading at one Georgia elementary school. In this multiple case study, the author interviewed, observed, and collected documents regarding ten fifth…