The success of universal screening for effective school mental health programs is dependent on the availability of usable measures as well as empirically based recommendations for use. The current study examined the long-term stability of a strengths-based social-emotional screening tool, the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment-Mini…

This article details a study that was designed to explore the differences and similarities with deaf and hard of hearing students regarding learning new vocabulary knowledge through the sign language. The purpose of this study was to know whether or not students who are deaf and hard of hearing are similar to their hearing peers when learning new…

The Board of Education's mission is to equitably educate the whole child so that every student graduates with the tools to reach their full potential. To succeed in their mission, the board participates in Lone Star Governance, whose intent is to provide a continuous improvement model for governing teams (Boards in collaboration with their…

This study evaluated the efficacy of the Word Learning Strategies (WLS) supplementary program designed to develop upper-elementary students' vocabulary skills in order to improve reading comprehension. The study used a true, group-randomized, experimental design, which randomly assigned 46 4th grade classrooms (n=1324 students) from 12 districts…

This paper examines the effect of a federally supported school turnaround program in North Carolina elementary and middle schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the turnaround program did not improve, and may have reduced, average school-level passing rates in math and reading. One potential contributor to that finding…

This applied dissertation was designed to provide the effectiveness of promoting change management through historical findings of closing reading comprehension (i.e., vocabulary) achievement gaps with black and white 9th and 10th grade students in a private school and 66 participants in this study. Achievement gaps in education refers to the…

Storytime is an important fixture in many school libraries that helps foster students' reading abilities. With a history of success, why would librarians want to alter storytime by incorporating technology? This article discusses how Laura Fleming, a long-time school librarian, addressed decreased student engagement in traditional reading…

The Reading Acceleration Program (RAP), which uses adaptively increasing text erasure rates to enforce reading rate improvements, has been positively evaluated in various languages, reader and age groups. The current study compared the established incremental increase of text erasure rate with a training using fixed erasure rates in two groups of…

Background: "Synthetic phonics" is the widely accepted approach for teaching reading in English: Children are taught to sound out the letters in a word then blend these sounds together. Aims: We compared the impact of two "synthetic phonics" programmes on early reading. Sample: Children received "Letters" and…

This paper challenges the reductive notion of children as "efferent" readers who learn to decode written language in order to "take away" knowledge. This anachronistic idea has become entrenched in current UK curriculum and education policy. However, it is well established that decoding letters and sounds is only one aspect of…

The Common Core raises the stature of texts to new heights, creating a hubbub. The fuss is especially messy at the early grades, where children are expected to read more complex texts than in the past. But early-grades teachers have been given little actionable guidance about text complexity. The authors recently examined early-grades texts to…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the application of behavior analytic procedures for advancing and evaluating methods for teaching literacy skills in the classroom. Particularly, applied behavior analysis has contributed substantially to examining the relationship between teacher behavior and student literacy performance. Teacher…

This study examined the relationship between response to intervention (RTI) implementation integrity in reading and student reading outcomes. Data were collected from 64 principals and school psychologists at 43 elementary schools. Hierarchical linear regression was used to examine the degree to which implementation of RTI tiers and key components…

In 2012, New York education officials and the state's teachers union announced one of the nation's most aggressive programs for teacher and principal evaluation--the Annual Professional Performance Review system (APPR)--which required that 40% of an educator's evaluation be based on student growth, using a combination of the state assessment and…

We use data from a large-scale experiment conducted in Indiana in 2009-2010 to examine the impact of two interim assessment programs (mCLASS and Acuity) across the mathematics and reading achievement distributions. Specifically, we focus on whether the use of interim assessments has a particularly strong effect on improving outcomes for low…