Understanding and addressing the literacy needs of middle school students is critical in ensuring their academic success. This quantitative study examines the literacy growth among middle school students participating in Tier II Response to Intervention and Instruction (RTI[superscript 2]) programs over the 2023-2024 academic year. It investigates…

The problem is that many public-school educations in various states rely on standardized testing resulting in misguided policies that further affect teaching and learning. This exploratory case study aimed to explore how teachers with 5 to 10 years of teaching experience in the Florida Region describe the influence of standardized testing on…

This study is the first statewide analysis of the effectiveness of the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. Introduced in 2019, TIA is the most significant and unprecedented teacher merit-pay system in the U.S. Leveraging the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct a counterfactual scenario to assess the causal impact of TIA on…

Mathematics teachers are continuously looking for ways to improve student learning. New or modified classroom strategies can help teachers reach these goals to increase student achievement, motivation, and confidence in their abilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of students working as collaborative pairs in high school…

Since the enactment of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 2004, there has been a notable increase in the enrollment of students receiving special education services (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2022). However, despite advancements in special education programming and service delivery, academic…

Recent years have produced a surge in interest in improving state assessment programs. Many states are designing new assessments. Much of this innovation is aimed at addressing longstanding areas of unhappiness with typical domain-sampled, end-of-year state assessments: States want to streamline assessment activities, enhance the instructional…

Background: The past half-century has resulted in a substantial expansion of early childhood center-based care in the United States. Today, over 74% of American children aged 3-5 attend center-based care (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Although public pre-k is considered socially favorable,…

The achievement gap, or opportunity gap, in education is when one group of students outperforms another group of students in statistical category. For decades, these gaps been analyzed in an attempt to support students and close these differences in categorical scores. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to focus on closing the…

The purpose of this study was to determine if academic intensive care units along with no-zero grading policies at the high school level result in students having higher achievement levels on state EOC assessments. A mixed-methods approach was taken in order to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data from surveys and interviews. Additional…

U.S. public schools are engaged in an unprecedented effort to expand tutoring in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Broad-based support for scaling tutoring emerged, in part, because of the large effects on student achievement found in prior meta-analyses. We conduct an expanded meta-analysis of 265 randomized controlled trials and explore how…

Youth voter turnout remains stubbornly low and unresponsive to civic education. Rigorous evaluations of the effects of adopting civics tests for high school graduation by some states on youth voter turnout remain limited. We estimate the impact of a recent, state-mandated civics test policy--the Civics Education Initiative (CEI)--on youth voter…

Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively new model of early childhood education, with little evidence on whether and how it affects children's development. This study provides new evidence using data from Michigan, which has the nation's second-largest TK program. Using survey data (N=171) from administrators in 2021-2022, the paper…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of completing the edTPA on early career U.S. physical educators' mastery attributions, teaching efficacy, perceived effectiveness, and emotional experience. Methods: A sequential mixed methods design was used. Early career physical educators (N = 72) completed a survey that…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of a one-to-one intensive tutoring program in English and Mathematics on improving English learners' test scores on standardized assessments like the Pre-Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT). The program of interest in this study is called The Rising Stars Program and is designed based on…

Pennsylvania schools are under pressure to meet academic growth and achievement standards set forth by the Commonwealth. Due to these high-stakes, schools are always looking for ways to improve academics to not only meet the needs of students, but also the expectations put forth at the state level. The proposed research study examined if a…