With the onset and implementation of No Child Left Behind legislation almost two decades ago, coupled with declining performance by U.S. students compared with other developed countries, public education in our country has been under constant scrutiny from all fronts and continues to be there today. Much of the recent emphasis in educational research has been focused on early literacy issues in students, as well as effective early literacy teaching practices. Over the same time period, national data on reading performance in the lower grades has been mixed and inconsistent across different populations of students. Current National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2019) data shows that reading performance gaps have widened in the last ten years in both early language and vocabulary between students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and those from higher socio-economic backgrounds. Additionally, evidence also shows that learning deficiencies and scale scores in language acquisition, working vocabulary, and other reading skills actually grow over time instead of shrinking, even with most modern intervention models (Huang, 2015). Given the mixed, inconsistent or declining performance over the last decade by our students, particularly in ELA (Language Arts skills), and on my own personal experience as an educator in public education for thirty years, I felt that research that revolves around the gaps that are present in these populations is of utmost importance. Thus, the reason for this DiP was to design a study that looks at practices by high performing teachers that actually succeed in populations that are highly made up of students from low socio-economic populations and who are able to outperform peers in similar classrooms from the same area -- using like curricula and delivery methods and operating under the same mandatory reading block times and daily schedules. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]