This dissertation study employed quantitative methods to investigate the impact of adult questioning styles on children's novel vocabulary acquisition during shared storybook reading. In an effort to examine adult qualitative variations in shared storybook readings, two experiments were conducted to assess the effect of noneliciting questions…

Response to intervention (RTI) arose, in part, from the limited success of the pre-referral process, an approach advocated in the 1980s and 1990s, and accurately measuring the discrepancy between aptitude and achievement in young children. Reflecting these concerns, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was reauthorized in…

Many school accountability programs, including the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act are built on the premise that the threat of sanctions attached to failure will produce higher student achievement. However, the stigma associated with failing schools and the expected costs of possible future sanctions may lead experienced teachers to leave these…

This action research project is designed as a music-based intervention to address and overcome some of the risk factors for low achievement in mathematics that research has linked to poverty level. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that children who are eligible for school lunch programs in 4th grade score on average 13 points…

Undergraduate college "science partners" provided content knowledge and a supportive atmosphere for K-5 teachers in a university-school professional development partnership program in science instruction. The Elementary Science Education Partners program, a Local Systemic Change initiative supported by the National Science Foundation,…

Bill and Karen are special education teachers who have entirely different knowledge and skill profiles. Bill is a special educator with 20 years of experience. He teaches reading to third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in a high-poverty elementary school resource classroom. His school is currently engaging in a schoolwide Reading First effort…

This article reports that special interest groups opposed to charter schools and high-stakes testing have hijacked Massachusetts's once-independent board of education and stand poised to water down the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests and the accountability system they support. President Barack Obama and Massachusetts…

A federal program that provides housing vouchers to help poor families move out of high-poverty neighborhoods appears to be having little impact so far on children's academic achievement, a new report finds. Four to seven years after leaving their old neighborhoods, the study found, children who took part in the program were doing no better in…

This article provides a critical review of the quality of 12 recent large federal program evaluations. The review focused on elements of the evaluation design, inclusion of evaluation expertise among those who have oversight of the evaluation, and evaluation dissemination. Overall, the process analyses from these evaluations provide good models…

This paper presents the 2008 Maryland School Performance Report. It shows the academic performance results of the State and its 24 school systems. This report includes the results from the Maryland School Assessment (MSA) given in spring 2008, information about the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measures required by the federal No Child Left…

The education community offers a plethora of resources from which IDA practitioners can draw as they support their clients in asset-specific training. This paper presents an annotated list of internet resources on preparing for college. Most of these resources are for youth aspiring to go to college. The websites are broken down according to the…

Earthquakes are low-probability, high-consequence events. Though they may occur only once in the life of a school, they can have devastating, irreversible consequences. Moderate earthquakes can cause serious damage to building contents and non-structural building systems, serious injury to students and staff, and disruption of building operations.…

One of the important misconceptions in the American view of poverty is that people are poor because they do not work. This article presents an exercise, the "bottom line," which helps dispel students' misconceptions about the working poor. Through extensive primary-data collection and assembling a budget for low-skilled workers, the exercise: (1)…

The process of creating and transitioning the storehouse of university research and development to commercial products is by its nature a true partnership of great university innovators, experienced entrepreneurs and adequate funding sources. In the United States, the process of university innovation to commercialization begins deep in university…

This paper describes 25 National Science Foundation supported projects that have innovations designed to improve education for students majoring or minoring in statistics. The characteristics of these projects and the common themes which emerge are compared with the American Statistical Association's (ASA) guidelines for developing statistics…