The Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI) was a statewide policy requiring college readiness testing and participation in college readiness courses for high school students. We used regression discontinuity to compare outcomes for students scoring just above and below test score cutoffs for assignment to FCCRI. We also examined…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to garner knowledge on how teachers perceive the effects of gamification on students' academic performance on mathematics standardized examination. Gamification is a developing pedagogy with limited studies exploring its effectiveness in the discipline of mathematics. The 2 research…

This paper provides a secondary analysis of the May, Sirinides, Gray, and Goldsworthy (2016) evaluation of the Reading Recovery scale-up. We extend their findings to include analysis of the six subscales of the "Observation Survey (OS) of Early Literacy Achievement" (Clay, 2013) that the What Works Clearinghouse has previously used to…

School reform in the past several decades has taken a "modernist" bent in that it has focused on quantitatively based accountability systems modeled after business (Ravitch, 2013; Tienken & Orlich, 2013). The author uses a model devised by a Finnish scholar to demonstrate that 1) these reforms are indeed modernist, and 2) the private…

We explore how the opt-out movement has responded to the combination of a stringent federal policy with weak and often variable implementation among the states. Gaps between federal expectations and states' understandings of just how to make NCLB's demands a reality have created policy ambiguity. Parents who oppose standardized testing have…

The findings and discussions related to cultural bias in testing have in no way been unanimous. However, the considerations of this area of inquiry may possess meaningful implications for educators of any subject. In this review of literature, I describe the issues, research, and arguments surrounding cultural bias in testing and discuss…

The Comprehensive English Regents Exam, also referred to as the English Language Arts (ELA) Examination, is a widely used measure of student achievement in the K-12 system in New York, yet it is not without criticism. One concern is that the ELA Regents Exam may be contributing to the widening of the gap in graduation rates between English…

Between 1980 and 2000, obesity rates in the United States have doubled for adults and tripled for children (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], 2015). In addition, Texas, the second largest state, ranks 10th for the highest percentage of obesity among youth age 10-17 (CDC, 2015). Nationally, the United States falls behind other countries in high…

Over the past few years, opposition to statewide assessments around the nation has grown. A U.S. News & World Report article noted that as many as 500,000 students are opting out of state tests, including approximately one in five New York students. More commonly known as the opt-out movement, parents concerned about the quality and use of…

Gender achievement gaps on national and state assessments have been a popular research topic over the last few decades. Many prior studies examine these gaps in different subjects (e.g., mathematics, reading, and science) and grades (typically kindergarten through eighth grade) for students living in various regions (typically states or countries)…

How students do homework has been under-researched relative to classroom learning because it is more difficult to collect data on students' homework behaviors. Presumably, such data would have implications for students' achievement. To understand how students do homework and how homework performance and behaviors relate to end-of-year standardized…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to improve standardized language assessments among bilingual toddlers by investigating and removing the effects of bias due to unfamiliarity with cultural norms or a distributed language system. Method: The Expressive and Receptive Bayley-III language scales were adapted for use in a multilingual country…

Over the past 30 years teachers have been held increasingly accountable for the quality of education in their classroom. During this transition, the line between teacher appraisals, traditionally an instrument for continuous formative teacher feedback, and summative teacher evaluations has blurred. Student test scores, as an "objective"…

Background: The growing interest in principal effectiveness as a means of improving teaching and student learning has led to a focus on the quality of principal preparation programs (PPPs) with calls for the adoption of PPP accountability systems similar to those of teacher preparation programs. Objective: The purpose of the present study is to…

Standardized testing pressure sometimes discourages schools from broadly implementing experiential learning opportunities. However, some K-12 schools are challenging the trend with greater commitment to learning by experience. STREAM (science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, mathematics) school is a project-based program providing students…