The mental health of today's college students continues to be a top-level concern for institutions of higher education, whether it is viewed from the perspective of staffing mental health services on campus, responding to after-hours crises in residence halls, providing accessible treatment with limited budgets, managing behavioral threats, or…

"Evidence-centered design" (ECD) is a comprehensive framework for describing the conceptual, computational and inferential elements of educational assessment. It emphasizes the importance of articulating inferences one wants to make and the evidence needed to support those inferences. At first blush, ECD and "educational data…

In the United States, English learners (EL) often do not have the academic language proficiency, literacy skills, cultural background, and content knowledge necessary to succeed in kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms. This leads to large achievement gaps. Also, classroom texts are often riddled with linguistically unfamiliar elements,…

The intention of this study was to examine three factors regarding the implementation of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model. First, the study discovered what professional development opportunities were afforded to administrators and certified faculty to support the implementation of the RtI model within schools that make AYP and those that…

This study examined dimensions of treatment integrity, specifically program differentiation, within the context of a kindergarten reading intervention study. The study explored the relationship between program differentiation and student outcomes. The study was conducted within the context of Project Early Reading Intervention (ERI), a four-year…

The educational system has an increasing population of students with diverse learning needs that must be addressed to ensure all students are academically successful. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether differentiated instruction had a positive effect on the vocabulary and the reading comprehension of struggling 2nd grade…

Teacher education programs have been criticized as too theoretical with university courses disconnected from the practical realities of classrooms. This single case study investigates a model of teacher education that worked to bridge the coursework-fieldwork gap in teacher education. The Mediated Field Experience (MFE) is a field experience…

One program designed to prepare first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students to transition from high school to college are early college high school programs which allow qualified students to simultaneously obtain high school diplomas and associate's degrees. However, little is known about how students and faculty perceive such…

Many teachers are concerned about their ability to work effectively with students who have attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The purpose of this quantitative, descriptive study was to determine the perceived efficacy of common interventions used to address negative ADHD behaviors in the elementary and middle school classrooms. The…

The purpose of this mixed-methods participatory action research study was to explore the impact of learning communities on students enrolled in the lowest level of developmental math at a two-year college. The learning community consisted of twenty-three students who were enrolled in both a student success course (GEN102) and a developmental math…

There is a consensus among researchers that teachers from diverse linguistic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds contribute to American education (Dee, 2004; Easton-Brooks, Lewis, & Yang, 2010; Irvine, 2003; Irvine & Fenwick, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 2005; Lu, 2005; Talbert-Johnson, 2001). There is also a call for teacher educators to recognize what…

Technological progress has consistently driven remarkable advances in the U.S. economy, yet K-12 education sees little technological change compared to other sectors, even as U.S. K-12 students increasingly lag behind students in other nations. This proposal considers how we can take a signature American strength--innovation--and apply it to K-12…

Three years after signing the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965--legislation that established the Basic Education Opportunity Grant (now called the Pell Grant)--President Lyndon Johnson declared that "every man, everywhere, should be free to develop his talents to their full potential--unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income."…

The importance of strong school-university partnerships in bridging the so-called theory practice gap in pre-service teacher education has been well established in the literature. The experiences of pre-service teachers during practicum have in particular been shown to be enhanced where there are strong links between the two educational sectors.…

The National Wildlife Federation engaged in a two-year partnership with AISD to build and maintain outdoor learning habitats for elementary and middle school campuses. This report summarizes the findings from the year 2 program evaluation (academic year 2011-2012), focusing on teacher perceptions and curriculum considerations as well as the actual…