Educators in gifted education struggle to identify effective strategies for identifying gifted students from under-served populations who would benefit from gifted education services. Using data from a longitudinal study and drawing from an initial student sample in 12 low-income rural districts, we examined an alternative identification process…

The Migrant Education Program (MEP) is authorized under Title I of the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). To comply with Title I, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) MEP works to assist migrant students to overcome the challenges of mobility, cultural and language barriers, social isolation, and other difficulties associated with a…

"Prentice Hall/Pearson Literature©" (2007-15) is an English language arts curriculum designed for students in grades 6-12 that focuses on building reading, vocabulary, literary analysis, and writing skills. It uses passages from fiction and nonfiction texts, poetry, and contemporary digital media. The curriculum is based on a textbook.…

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided free prekindergarten classes for eligible Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 school year. HISD offers full-day prekindergarten programs to all eligible students within its attendance boundaries. HISD collaborates with four federally-funded Head Start agencies that…

The heart of effective programming for gifted students lies in the integration of advanced curricula with effective instructional strategies to develop leaning activities that will enhance student learning outcomes. However, empirical evidence of the effectiveness of units based on such curricular and instructional interventions from large-scale…

In compliance with the Texas Education Code § 29.153, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided free prekindergarten classes for eligible Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 academic year. The program curriculum focuses on beginning literacy, numeracy, social emotional development as well as supporting the…

Genetic liability to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be expressed in unaffected relatives through subclinical, genetically meaningful traits, or endophenotypes. This study aimed to identify developmental endophenotypes in parents of individuals with ASD by examining parents' childhood academic development over the school-age period. A cohort of…

Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided prekindergarten classes for Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 academic year. The focus of the program is on lifelong learning to enhance the physical, emotional, and social well-being of the whole child and provide the foundational skills required for career and college…

The purpose of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and Head Start Collaborative programs is to share the responsibility for closing the achievement gap between economically-disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers. Currently, HISD collaborates with the following four federally-funded Head Start agencies that serve regional…

This study hypothesized that HISD prekindergarten participation consistently correlated with better educational outcomes for students. Taking into account students' age differences through kindergarten enrollment, propensity score matching controlled for students' background characteristics. Three cohorts of students in this study were eligible or…

The goal of Head Start is to develop the cognitive and social-emotional skills of children from low-income families to prepare them to succeed in kindergarten and beyond. Presently, Houston Independent School District (HISD) collaborates with four federally-funded Head Start agencies: AVANCE, Gulf Coast Community Services Association (GCCSA),…

The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which are designed for Spanish-speaking ELLs. The largest group of students in this category consists of ELLs whose home language…

The purpose of this exploratory two-group pretest-posttest comparative survey study was to determine the effect of a team adviser-advisee academic, behavior, and character mentoring program on the achievement, school engagement, and behavior outcomes of eighth grade students determined to be above (n = 21) and below (n = 15) eligibility guidelines…

Enrollment in Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) schools is declining as is the number of schools and teachers. While there could be many reasons for this, one perception of SDA schools, held by parents, teachers, pastors, and school board members, is that students enrolled in schools with one, two, or three teachers do not achieve at the same rate as…

This is a research brief of a longer report, also published as "Bilingual Education and English as a Second Language Summary Report, 2009-2010". Twenty-nine percent of students enrolled in Austin Independent School District were English language learners in 2009-2010. The majority of them (62%) continued to make progress in English…