The Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (TOSCRF; Hammill, Wiederholt, & Allen, 2006), as its name implies, is designed to measure contextualized silent reading fluency in students aged 7 to 18. Its purposes are to identify good and poor readers, to measure contextual fluency, and to monitor reading development. The TOSCRF measures how…

This study examined technical features of slopes produced from curriculum-based measures (CBM) of beginning writing. Eighty-five first-graders completed weekly sentence copy, picture-word, and story prompts for 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, testing revealed alternate-form reliability and criterion validity of CBM scores generally similar to those…

The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

Research Findings: The present study concerns children's behavioral adjustment in the context of pre-primary schools in Tanzania. Twenty teachers and 320 children from 20 pre-primary schools participated in the study. Teacher-child relationships, children's behavioral adjustment, and teachers' cultural beliefs were reported by teachers; classroom…

In this article, the authors clarify the role of the leadership team, providing a rationale for one integrated team to examine academic, social, and behavioral programming, with careful attention to including all key stakeholders. Next, the authors discuss the procedures for teaching all key stakeholders the comprehensive, integrated, three-tiered…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were created in response to the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind era standards and assessments. Among those failings were the poor quality of content standards and assessments and the variability in content expectations and proficiency targets across states, as well as concerns related to the economic…

What is effective teaching? It is not enough to say "I know it when I see it"--not when we are expecting so much more from students and teachers than in the past. To help teachers achieve greater success with their students we need new and better ways to identify and develop effective teaching. The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)…

The study surveyed 96 Bruneian primary schools administrators (principals) in using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Out of the five subscales used to assess the ICT usage, only two: curriculum integration and need assessment were found to be significant towards the use of the ICT. The results further indicate that majority of…

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…

During hearings in the late 1980s on education legislation, the frustrated chairman of the Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Gus Hawkins (D-CA), would sometimes lean over to his chief counsel and ask: "Why can't these people agree on the facts? If they did that, we could solve these problems quickly." That…

The Census Bureau has historically grouped high school diploma holders along with those who hold "high school equivalent" credentials. Among these is the credential earned through successfully passing the General Education Development (GED) test. Interest in identifying those with GEDs has recently increased, in part from debate within…

There is a growing consensus that teacher evaluation in the United States is fundamentally broken. Few would argue that a system that tells 98 percent of teachers they are "satisfactory" benefits anyone--including teachers. The nation's collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with…

Research has long been clear that teachers matter more to student learning than any other in-school factor. Improving the quality of teaching is critical to student success. Yet only recently have many states and districts begun to take seriously the importance of evaluating teacher performance and providing teachers with the feedback they need to…

As part of the National Science Foundation Science Literacy through Science Journalism (SciJourn) research and development initiative (http://www.scijourn.org; Polman, Saul, Newman, and Farrar, 2008) a quasi-experimental design was used to investigate what impact incorporating science journalism activities had on students' scientific literacy.…

No one has a bigger stake in teaching effectiveness than students. Nor are there any better experts on how teaching is experienced by its intended beneficiaries. Only recently have many policymakers and practitioners come to recognize that--when asked the right questions, in the right ways--students can be an important source of information on the…