In October 2010, the Council of the Great City Schools released a major report on the academic status of African American males, "A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools." The report was the first phase of the Council's efforts to recommit the energies of the nation's urban…

As part of its proposal to the U.S. Department of Education, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) committed to developing model content frameworks for English language arts/literacy (ELA/Literacy) to serve as a bridge between the Common Core State Standards and the PARCC assessments. The Model Content…

This narrative inquiry aims to better understand and document how a bilingual Latina preservice elementary teacher's experiences as an immigrant student and English learner (EL) inform the construction of her professional identity and practice as an English language arts (ELA) educator. Although the study participant voices a lack of confidence,…

The authors describe a collaborative relationship between a new middle level language arts teacher and a teacher educator in which they implement "classroom committees." This project enabled students to be responsible for their classroom environment as they worked together to problem solve issues that were important to them. Bryant and Daniels…

Evidence to validate the use of fixed-time (FT) reinforcer delivery (i.e., noncontingent reinforcement) with typically developing populations has been relatively rare in the behavioral literature. In those studies that have provided validation, reinforcer delivery schedules appeared to be prohibitively dense for sustained implementation of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the policy implications allowing administrators to exempt a student from required arts instruction if the student obtained unsatisfactory scores on the high-stake state mandated tests in English and mathematics. This study examined English language arts and math test scores for 37,222 eighth grade students…

This "Informed Educator" draws content from several reports as well as a PowerPoint presentation that describe findings from a study conducted by EdSource and its research partners from Stanford University and the American Institutes for Research. The project--Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades: Why Some Schools Do Better--focused on…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the length of years of preschool attendance on the academic achievement and retention of third and fourth grade students in high and low achieving schools. The study consisted of the analysis of secondary data, i.e., mathematics and language arts literacy scores as the measurement of academic…

National testing standards have increased pressure on school personnel to identify and implement instructional practices that facilitate the academic achievement of at-risk students. No Child Left Behind legislation currently mandates that reading programs at the middle school level receiving federal funding must use scientifically validated…

In this investigation, 55 of the 72 Suffolk County public schools were analyzed using archival data gleaned from the New York State Education Department's BEDS report for the years 2000 to 2005. Three primary research questions were used to determine if the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 had an impact on four ethnic groups, wealth of different…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the academic impacts of the Twenty-First Century Community Learning Centers on students who participated in this program. The following research questions guided the study: (a) are there significant differences between the Criterion Reference Competency Test English Language Arts scores of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the policy implications allowing administrators to exempt a student from required arts instruction if the student obtained unsatisfactory scores on the high-stake state mandated tests in English and mathematics. This study examined English language arts and math test scores for 37,222 eighth grade students…

Middle grades teachers should create meaningful learning activities involving stimulating literature and interesting composition prompts. This article describes a unit in which eighth graders read short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Using multiple learning and teaching approaches, they expanded their vocabularies, responded artistically to "The…

This study has tackled the thorny problem of closing the Student Achievement Gap (SAG) in California's elementary schools. To address that problem, an "Integrated" form of educational leadership called Transformational Instructional Leadership (TIL), a form grounded in "best practices" of Transformational and Instructional…

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…