Background: Several studies in recent years have indicated a link between socio-economic status (SES) of families and children's language development, including studies that have measured children's language through formal standardized test procedures. High numbers of children with low performance have been found in lower socio-economic groups in…

This study investigated the development of novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension in both typically developing (TD) children and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS). Thirty-one TD children between the ages of 3;09 and 17;01 and thirty-four individuals with WS between the ages of 7;01 and 44 years old were administered a newly developed task…

Today in urban education, schools are forced to keep up and compete with students nationally with high-stake testing. Standardized tests are often bias in nature and often do not measure the true ability of a student. Casas (2003) believes that all children can learn but they may learn differently. Therefore, using authentic assessments is an…

The purpose of this study was not to disprove the effects of the current, common remedial literacy course design and the literacy practices within that help adolescent RLLs pass statewide assessment tests, but to describe the potential long-term impact of an innovative comprehensive approach to literacy (CAL) framed through an integrated course…

The AVANCE Head Start program provides comprehensive early childhood education and family support services to low-income families with children 3 to 5 years of age. One of the main purposes of Head Start is to help children from low-income backgrounds succeed in kindergarten and beyond. This report examines the academic performance of AVANCE…

This study examined reliability and validity of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), based on samples of parents and teachers' ratings of 1,145 entering kindergartners in the Southwest. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that DECA presented good reliability and validity for manifest variables, corroborating previous findings. Three…

Standardized testing has been a very important issue in education today. Many schools use the testing score to determine whether a child should continue to the next grade level. As we review the methods teachers use to prepare students for these types of tests, the amount of instruction time utilized to cover test materials, and the level of…

School accountability decisions based on standardized tests hinge on the degree of alignment of the test with the state's standards documents. Yet, there exist no established criteria for judging strength of alignment. Previous measures of alignment among tests, standards, and teachers' instruction have yielded mixed results that are difficult to…

This study was designed and conducted in an educational climate in which school and teacher accountability for student learning is increasingly connected to students' performances on standardized tests. The participants in this study, 5 middle school English language arts teachers, each rejected their district-sponsored data-driven instruction…

This study examined whether students who participated in the trades and industry curriculum did better than their counterparts on standardized tests. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) High School Transcript Study (HSTS) were used. A nationally represented sample of over 37,000 public and private school students were…

In this article, the author discusses the public discourse on education. On that subject, Republicans and Democrats speak the same language--and so, with striking uniformity, do more and more college and university leaders. The view of teaching and learning as an economic driver is a limited one, which puts at risk America's most distinctive…

This article presents the author's open letter to her students. In her letter, the author apologizes to her students for the state's narrow and deceptive standardized test. She asserts that she does not oppose rigorous testing and she understands the purpose of evaluation. A good test can measure achievement and even inspire. But, she argues that…

Jim Garrison's article (Garrison 2012) critiques current reforms in the United States for fostering a harmful "standardization" in schooling, which threatens to further undermine the country's democratic heritage and to prepare many students for servitude in an oppressive social order. John Dewey is cited throughout, as befits Professor…

In Someone Has to Fail, Labaree (2010) offers an admirably concise overview of the history and promise of education reform in the United States, combining insights from the history of education, policy studies, and a refreshingly accurate and nuanced account of what it is like to actually manage a classroom environment. While in this essay we…

I-states-as-objects-analysis (ISOA) is a person-oriented methodology for studying short-term developmental stability and change in patterns of variable values. ISOA is based on longitudinal data with the same set of variables measured at all measurement occasions. A key concept is the "i-state," defined as a person's pattern of variable…