This report conducted an evaluation of the initial implementation of Reading Roots 5 and determined the program's impacts on students' reading outcomes. The study employed a one-group, pre-post correlational study design. Overall, participating students' reading achievement and fluency increased over the period when RR5 was implemented. This pilot…

Program satisfaction, self-efficacy to change, and willingness to change, are dispositions that influence physical education teacher change. The study purpose was to validate an instrument measuring program satisfaction, self-efficacy to change, and willingness to change relative to teachers' likelihood to change. A 15-item Teacher Change…

Open Educational Resources (OER) are gaining acceptance as legitimate and effective teaching materials in higher education, particularly in 2-year institutions. Despite the steady growth in the availability and use of OER, there have been relatively few studies on the efficacy of OER and student achievement. This study analyzed the effect…

Although collaboration is recognized as an effective means to address multifaceted community issues, successful collaboration is difficult to achieve and failure is prevalent. To effectively collaborate, collaborators must recognize the strengths and weaknesses within their own efforts. Using Mattessich and colleagues' work as a springboard, a…

Social studies researchers across a wide geographical area assessed the degree of authentic intellectual challenge present in a diverse sample of U.S. classrooms, investigated whether students from different social and academic contexts were more likely to encounter authentic pedagogy than others, and examined how the level of authentic pedagogy…

This article describes the Wakefield Cohort program at Wakefield High School, located in Arlington, Virginia, which has a thirteen-year history of success in supporting minority male students. While data show the program's effectiveness, former students' stories are more powerful; therefore, this article presents the stories of two graduates about…

The rapid growth in online learning opportunities and online courses in K-12 education is well documented in the literature. Studies conducted by various researchers that have focused on the K-12 population of online learners demonstrate that certain online learner characteristics and online learning environment characteristics may impact the…

Current National Assessment of Educational Progress results continued their 40-year pattern with two-thirds of U.S. 8th graders not proficient in reading, yet formal reading and literacy instruction ends in elementary school. Lack of reading proficiency can undermine academic progress in high school. Elementary literacy instruction provides…

The purpose of this study was to analyze a prominent alternative education practice in the Commonwealth of Virginia through an analysis of the Virginia Department of Education's Individual Student Alternative Education Plan (ISAEP) program and the alternative education environment it provides. This was a descriptive study using non-experimental…

Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) have advanced and matured, a number of states and localities have undertaken evaluations to validate the systems. Such efforts stem from the desire to ensure that the system is designed and operating in the ways envisioned when the system was established. Given that a central component in a QRIS…

This study was designed to determine the extent to which middle-level principals reported the use of literacy leadership dimensions and whether or not a predictive relationship exists between the use of these dimensions and student reading proficiency in Grades 6 through 8 in Region 2 in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Also examined was the…

This dissertation explores the long-term influence of the SPARK Program (Shore People Advancing Readiness for Knowledge) on the environmental attitudes of some of its alumni. SPARK was designed for parents and their preschool children who live in a rural area on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The main goal of this program is to provide…

The purpose of this mixed-methods explanatory case study was to determine the impact of a reduced school calendar on student achievement for students in grades 9 through 12 in two rural school districts in Virginia and to explore meanings associated with this change. The study focused on two research questions: how does student performance during…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between a teacher's expertise, instructional practices, belief about assessment, use of assessment, and student achievement. There is minimal and sometimes conflicting research to support the relationship between teacher characteristics and student achievement. For the present study, teacher…

According to Lundeberg, Fox, and Punccohar (1994), the reason that there are fewer women in certain professions is because of a lack of self-confidence. In a review of the literature, they found studies reporting a lack of self-confidence in sixth-grade girls, high school students, and women in undergraduate and graduate school. In her work on…