Despite a continuing record of interest over the years, few studies have documented the demographics of grade retention or the relationship between it and academic achievement across multiple grades and groups of students. In this research, we were interested in the characteristics and consequences of retaining students in elementary (K-5) and…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement was started roughly ten years old (Wiley & Gurell, 2009). Since that time thousands of resources have been produced. Though these resources have been used both for classroom development and for the autodidact, the development of OER was not without problems. Incompatibility between Creative Commons…

In the first part of this two-part article, the author described Dr. Patricia Shehan Campbell's (2004) exciting ideas for fully engaging students during listening lessons. He chose Everything But the Girl's song "Lullaby Of Clubland the Jay "Sinister" Sealee Remix" to model Dr. Campbell's pedagogical sequence. He also described the three-stage…

Temporal distinctiveness models of recency in free recall predict that increasing the delay between the end of sequence and attempting recall of items from that sequence will reduce recency. An empirical dissociation is reported here that violates this prediction when the delay is introduced by the act of recall itself. Analysis of data from a…

The aim of the International Society for Technology, Education, and Science (iHSES) conference is to offer opportunities to share ideas, discuss theoretical and practical issues, and connect with the leaders in the fields of "humanities," "education" and "social sciences." It is organized for: (1) faculty members in…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the Home Improvement for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program on school performance during the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th grades. The study employed a quasi-experimental, post-hoc design using existing data on children who participated in the HIPPY program as 3-, 4-, or 5-year-olds, including:…

Research indicates that the practice of grade-level retention may have negative effects on students; nevertheless it is often used in practice for students who fail to meet academic standards. In contrast to retention, response to intervention (RtI) is a sound practice that is based on a preventive framework and utilizes differentiated instruction…

This REL West study explores the prevalence of students repeating Algebra I, who is most likely to repeat the course, and the level of improvement for students who repeat. Using six years of data from a cohort of 3,400 first-time seventh grade students in a California school district, authors found that 44 percent of students repeated algebra I.…

Given the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, California's history of math acceleration in the middle grades, and the concern for correct math course placement for all students, this brief examines patterns from the past to shed light on considerations for the future. The brief, written by WestEd's Tony Fong and Neal Finkelstein, presents…

Many English Language Learners (ELLs) migrate to the United States at older ages and administrators must choose a grade in which to place these new entrants as soon as they register for school. In this study, I estimate the effect of grade placement on the short-term academic performance of ELLs who enroll in the Miami-Dade County Public School…

For young people, not being in education, employment or training (NEET) may be detrimental to self-esteem and limit possibilities for achieving financial security and a respectable position in society. One major educational problem in Estonia is low academic achievement at the upper level of basic education (Grades 7-9), reflected in a large…

Currently, there are approximately 1.3 million annual high school dropouts who potentially might lose $355 billion of income over their lifetimes. Effectively addressing retention and dropout issues has far-reaching societal implications. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between ninth-grade retention and on-time graduation. For the…

Individual differences in nonword repetition are associated with language and literacy development, but few studies have considered the extent to which learning to read influences phonological skills as indexed by nonword repetition performance. We explored this question using a latent variable longitudinal design. Reading, oral language and…

Spaced learning usually leads to better recognition memory as compared with massed learning, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. One open question is whether the spacing effect is achieved by reducing neural repetition suppression. In this fMRI study, participants were scanned while intentionally memorizing 120 novel faces, half…

The preview benefit describes the finding that participants can prioritize the selection of new stimuli by the top-down inhibition of previously presented (previewed) items already in the field (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). Previous work has shown that if the old items undergo a permanent shape change when the new are added, then the old items…