We estimate the effects of relative age in kindergarten using data from an experiment where children of the same age were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classmates. We exploit the resulting experimental variation in relative age in conjunction with variation in expected kindergarten entry age based on birth date to account for…

The Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) Reading Assessment (FRA) consists of computer-adaptive reading comprehension and oral language screening tasks that provide measures to track growth over time, as well as a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 50th percentile) on the reading comprehension…

School vouchers are the most contentious form of parental school choice. Vouchers provide government funds that parents can use to send their children to private schools of their choice. Here we examine the empirical question of whether or not a school voucher program in Washington, DC, affected achievement or the rate of high school graduation…

In a response-to-intervention framework, schools typically employ a direct route approach to screening, in which students identified as at risk by a screening process are directly placed into intervention. Direct route approaches require screening decisions to be highly accurate, but few studies examining the predictive validity of reading…

The authors' purpose was to explore the effects of a supplementary, guided, silent reading intervention with 80 struggling third-grade readers who were retained at grade level as a result of poor performance on the reading portion of a criterion referenced state assessment. The students were distributed in 11 elementary schools in a large, urban…

Turning around chronically low-performing schools requires a multifaceted school-wide, systematic effort that includes strong leadership and data-based decision making. School-wide efforts to turn-around low-performing schools should address the academic, social, and behavioral needs of all students. One evidence-based, systematic school-wide…