In 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded $107 million in four-year grants to 24 applicants for the Youth CareerConnect (YCC) program, a high school-based program that blended academic and career-focused learning to better prepare students for both college and careers in high-growth industries that often rely on foreign workers. The…

This quantitative research project analyzes the relationship between the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) subtest and the New York State English Language Arts (NYS ELA) test. The study was completed in Upstate New York using the results of the NYS third-grade tests from the 2017-2018 school…

Helping principals improve their leadership practices is a common use of federal funds and one way to improve instruction and student achievement. This study sought to better understand the effectiveness of an intensive principal professional development program focused primarily on helping principals conduct structured observations of teachers'…

The College and Career Readiness and College Completion Act of 2013 (CCR-CCA) established a number of requirements designed to increase college and career readiness as well as degree completion in Maryland. With a rapidly changing economy and a focus on increasing the percent of young adults with postsecondary degrees, the intent of the Act is to…

The purpose of this exploratory study is to provide evidence on how teaching practices might contribute to student learning in different ways for different groups of students or in different kinds of schools. Two overarching research questions guide the study: (1) What instructional practices used by ELA teachers are related to higher levels of…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the reading volume and book choices of fourth-grade students and how they identified as readers. Students were encouraged to read 50 books independently. The results showed that students read throughout the year. Grade-level readers described themselves as being a part of the book, while above-…

In this article, I present an overview of intersectionality, and its critiques as well as make visible how it is enacted in elementary school classrooms. I focus primarily on issues of gender expression, sexuality, and family diversity as a way of centering the role of advocacy in our work as teachers and researchers. Many language arts teachers,…

Students with learning disabilities struggle with basic comprehension skills across all content areas. By pairing comprehension strategies with content instruction, secondary content area teachers can strengthen students' reading skills and content knowledge. This article provides an overview of two comprehension strategies, anticipation guides…

In order to compete globally in the 21st Century, students must have the skills to design their own projects and understand how to navigate the wealth of information available at their fingertips. One of the most important tools is to be able to investigate ideas and implement a plan of action in order to answer questions that have not been…

Making causal inferences from a quasi-experiment is difficult. Sensitivity analysis approaches to address hidden selection bias thus have gained popularity. This study serves as an introduction to a simple but practical form of sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation procedures. We examine estimated treatment effects for a school-based…

This paper provides the first population-based evidence on how much standardized test scores vary among public school districts within each state and how segregation explains that variation. Using estimates based on roughly 300 million test score records in math and English Language Arts (ELA) for Grades 3 through 8 from every U.S. public school…

A random sample of 1,313 grades 7-9 Chinese language arts teachers in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taipei were surveyed about their instructional writing practices. When asked about their college, inservice, and personal preparation, three out of four teachers indicated that they were poorly prepared to teach writing. They were slightly…

This qualitative study examined what teacher candidates learned in a field-based mediated Language Arts methods course, intentionally designed to support teacher candidates in learning what is possible rather than typical, in an urban school setting where curriculum is often prescriptive rather than generative. Culturally sustaining pedagogies…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how US school leaders and teachers make sense of multiple accountability policies, including the Common Core State Standards and teacher evaluation, and how this process relates to school priorities and classroom practice. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a comparative case study…

The ability to read proficiently is a comprehensive skill necessary for success at all academic levels. Students who consistently read below grade level continue to struggle throughout their school years with little chance of recovery. The administrative leaders of the Ocean View School District (a pseudonym) noticed a decline in reading scores…