The purpose of the current research is to determine the effect of changing the English Language Art curriculum on the reading growth of fourth-grade students who attended a public school district located in a suburban community in the Northeastern part of the United States. This ex-post facto study is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the…

Much research has noted the misalignment between kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) academic standards and curriculum materials used in classrooms. Many states and education organizations have been pushing for greater use of standards-aligned curriculum, especially during the past several years. In this report, the authors share results…

Despite a 100-year-old history and the existence of schools in nearly every country in the world, Waldorf education is a little known and poorly understood educational model that was developed in Europe by Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner. For many years it existed in the United States in the form of private schools. Few of their teachers or…

In countries with high differentiation between academic and vocational education, an individual's future prospects are strongly determined by the educational track to which he or she is assigned. This large-scale, cross-sectional study focuses on low-performing students in academic tracks who face being moved to a vocational track. If more is…

The heart of effective programming for gifted services lies in the development of curricula that will challenge and enhance learning outcomes for gifted students. Educators have voiced concerns about the lack of differentiated curricula and instruction in gifted classrooms and the paucity of empirical evidence to support their effectiveness for…

This dissertation reports case studies from in-depth phenomenological interviewing of six individual female university students. The purpose of this dissertation was to describe the influence that literature experiences have had on the identity formation of said participant informants through recursive analysis of their interviews, observing how…

The purpose of this study was to discover and compare perceptions of three different groups of Indiana elementary educators concerning the importance of areas of the principal's literacy knowledge base, as well as responsibility for and use of this knowledge by principals to adequately support effective research-based literacy instruction. The…

The goals of this research are two-fold: (1) to survey the literature comparing the effectiveness (as measured by student achievement on state tests) of scripted language arts/reading programs in low-performing schools, and (2) to compare middle school teachers' attitudes (measured in questionnaires, interviews and surveys) on implementation and…

Presents comparisons between the traditional curriculum and the essential learnings curriculum implemented at the Moss Point School District in Moss Point, Mississippi. Describes in detail the curriculum transformation process. Provides insight into the role of technology in the reading/language arts curriculum. (RS)

For over two decades the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement has administered achievement tests internationally. Results of past and future tests can not only indicate where U.S. students rank in achievement, but also broaden curriculum makers' visions of what is desirable for students. (Author/JM)

This pilot descriptive study examined expressed perceptions of a diverse group of teachers who, in the 2002-2003 school year, piloted implementation of a new standards based supplemental program in reading/language arts, EduSTRANDS. Over 600 teachers in 153 schools using a supplemental, standards based reading/language arts program were surveyed…

Based on a search of the literature, a series of eight propositions were derived to describe the basic middle school language arts program being portrayed in the literature. Fifty principals and language arts department chairpersons were asked to rate, on a scale of one to five, the degree to which their language arts department accepted and…

Increasingly over the past decade there have appeared in the press bar graphs comparing the performance of U.S. students with their counterparts in other countries. Usually these graphs have been accompanied by dire warnings and pointing fingers. The main source of the data on international comparisons has been the International Association for…

Jonathan Culler's notion, that each change of perspective a reader makes brings something different from the text, is explored by using four curricula. They are: the traditional language arts curriculum, an active reading comprehension curriculum, a psychology curriculum, and a feminist curriculum. By analyzing the same text, "Snow White and…