"Success for All" ("SFA"®) is a whole-school reform model (that is, a model that integrates curriculum, school culture, family, and community supports) for students in prekindergarten through grade 8. "SFA"® includes a literacy program, quarterly assessments of student learning, a social-emotional development program,…

This experimental study examined how the reading and writing development of sixth-grade L2 students was affected by syntactic enhancement. Visual-syntactic text formatting (VSTF) technology, which visualizes syntactic structures, was used to convert a textbook to the one with syntactic enhancement. The sample (n = 282), which was drawn from a…

In randomized controlled trials (RCTs) where the outcome is a student-level, study-collected test score, a particularly valuable piece of information is a study-collected baseline score from the same or similar test (a pre-test). Pre-test scores can be used to increase the precision of impact estimates, conduct subgroup analysis, and reduce bias…

In the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Congress called for the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to conduct a rigorous study of the conditions and practices under which educational technology is effective in increasing student academic achievement. A 2007 report presenting study findings for the 2004-2005 school year, indicated that, after one…

The Coleman Report demonstrated that family background is correlated with achievement in school. This research examined this relationship for different sexes and social classes. Family background included whether or not a child was living with both natural parents as well as the ordinal position of the child and the number of children in the…

Contained in this yearbook are the proceedings of the fifth annual Arizona State University Reading Conference. This edition reflects an emphasis on a wide range of topics, including study skills, oral language, and teaching strategies. Following a foreword, the conference articles discuss the following: (1) study skills across the curriculum, (2)…

Over many decades, the efforts of researchers to understand key issues in the reading performance of those children most at risk for developing later reading problems has been relentless. This article presents the author's commentary to three studies: (1) Vanderwood, Linklater, and Healy (2008); (2) Edl, Jones, and Estell (2008); and (3) Baker et…

There is a growing consensus among educators and the general public that technology should play a more integral role in students' education. However, the question of whether the introduction of technology into the classroom has a positive impact on teaching and learning is still under intense debate within the educational community. This…

The present study was undertaken with two related goals: (a) to examine the relationships between the WRAT and CAT, and (b) to examine the relationships which may exist between these academic achievement tests -nd a standard intelligence battery such as the Wechsler Scale. (Author)

A study investigated the correlation between students' learning styles and their academic achievement on report cards and standardized tests. Subjects were 58 fifth-grade students in a suburban middle school. The "Learning Style Inventory" by Brown and Cooper was administered to this population, and students' academic averages and…

A study of 20 North Carolina elementary schools shows that changes in California Achievement Test scores over a 2-year period do not correlate with changes in effective schools correlates. Results suggest that prescriptive use of the effective schools practices may be misguided. (SLD)

THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TASK SCORES VERSUS IQ AS PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT WAS INVESTIGATED, AND THE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN TASK SCORES AND IQ RE-EXAMINED. SUBJECTS WERE 99 UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN WITH A MEAN STANFORD-BINET IQ OF 126 (SD EQUALS 19). THE INSTRUMENTS USED WERE DUNN'S OBJECT SORTING TASK (OST),…

Two studies are briefly reported here, one concerned with a method for locating high ability inner-city students, and the other dealing with a method of motivating low achieving inner-city students. Both studies drew on a population of black junior high school students, eighth and ninth graders, 14, 15, and 16 years of age. In the first study,…

A 2-MONTH BASIC EDUCATION PROGRAM TESTED WHETHER A TOKEN REINFORCEMENT MIGHT BE AN EFFECTIVE INCENTIVE TO STIMULATE A DESIRED EDUCATIONAL BEHAVIOR. THE SUBJECTS (SS) WERE TWO MATCHED GROUPS OF FIVE 16- TO 21-YEAR-OLD GIRLS WHO WERE SCHOOL DROPOUTS EMPLOYED IN A NEIGHBORHOOD YOUTH CORPS (NYC) PROGRAM. A CLASSROOM GROUP WAS GIVEN A BASIC EDUCATION…

Classroom behaviors from the Texas Junior High School Study were related to achievement using both class means and student scores within classes as the units of analysis. Behaviors significantly related to achievement at the class level of analysis were not related to achievement within the class and vice versa. There was no clear pattern of…