Few studies have considered bilingualism's impact on cognitive development within the sociolinguistic and cultural context of the immigrant communities where bilingualism is commonly practiced. In the United States, many Mexican-origin bilingual youth practice their bilingual skills by "brokering" (i.e. translating/interpreting between…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) reading Rasch unIT (RIT) score and State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) and Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) reading achievement among English learners in Grades 8 and 9. The study also…

With the population of English learners (EL) entering Texas public schools increasing, it is essential to understand how the current school system supports these students. This study investigated the language used in school handbooks as a predictor of English Language Learners' (ELL) academic outcomes in Texas independent school districts. Student…

Purpose: There are well-established links between oral language and reading development in monolingual English-speaking children that are associated with literacy outcomes. Oral language, defined relative to lexical quality, provides key support for developing early reading skills. For bilingual children, the connection between oral language and…

We explore the classification accuracy of a parent and teacher report measure, the Inventory to Assess Language Knowledge (ITALK), to screen for developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children. Participants were 120 Spanish-English bilingual children with typical development (TD) and 19 bilingual children with DLD, ranging in age from…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether school type (Title I versus non-Title I), English learner (EL) student percentage, and low-socioeconomic status (low-SES) student percentage could statistically predict the percentage of third-grade students who perform at the Meets Grade Level (MGL) performance on the State of Texas…

We examined how generalized and mathematics-specific language skills predicted the word-problem performance of students with mathematics difficulty. Participants were 325 third-grade students in the southwestern United States who performed at or below the 25th percentile on a word-problem measure. We assessed generalized language skills in word…

STEM preparation--especially high school math course-taking--is a key predictor of college entrance. Previous research suggests that high school English learners (ELs) not only take fewer advanced math courses but also enroll in college at much lower rates than non-ELs--a group that includes former ELs. In the present study, we alter the analytic…

This study investigated the extent to which domain-general and domain-specific antecedents contributed to pre-algebra's initial level and growth rate among students who experience word-problem difficulty (WPD). We examined if such a profile differs for English-language learners (ELLs; n = 75) and non-ELLs (n = 55) with WPD. We assessed 130 U.S.…

Students enrolled in public education schools in the State of Texas are required to participate in and secure passage of a norm-referenced state assessment in different grade levels and subject areas. The State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) is the norm-referenced assessment used for students in grades third through eighth, and…

Although the research literature regarding language growth trajectories is burgeoning, the shape and direction of English Language Learners' (ELLs) language growth trajectories are largely not known. This study used growth curve modeling to determine the shape of ELLs' language growth trajectories across 12,248 oral narrative language samples…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine sentence-recognition performance for a large, diverse group of nonnative speakers of English on the recently developed Basic English Lexicon (BEL) sentence materials and to determine whether BEL sentence lists are equated in difficulty for this population. Method: The BEL sentences were presented…

This study examines semantic development in 60 Spanish-English bilingual children, ages 7 years 3 months to 9 years 11 months, who differed orthogonally in age (younger, older) and language experience (higher English experience [HEE], higher Spanish experience [HSE]). Children produced 3 associations to 12 pairs of translation equivalents. Older…

Since the emergence of middle schools as distinct educational settings in the 1960s, proponents of the model have advocated for structures and approaches that best meet the particular developmental needs of young adolescents. Middle school researchers have developed frameworks of best practices for schools that have been widely, if not uniformly,…

Research Findings: Multitiered instructional frameworks are becoming a recommended approach for enhancing prevention and intervention efforts targeting early literacy and language skills. However, few studies to date have studied the feasibility of tiered oral language interventions before kindergarten; therefore, this pilot study explored the…