Teaching children too many words during a lesson reduces retention. The amount of new information a student can successfully rehearse and recall later is called acquisition rate (AR), which has been reliably measured with students in first, third, and fifth grades. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability of assessing AR for sight…

The focus of this study was to examine the effective instructional practices, philosophies, values, and beliefs of highly effective reading teachers, as evidenced by their students' rate of reading growth over the course of one academic year across all demographic subgroups. Teacher instructional strategies, approaches to tier one and tier two…

When a child does not seem to be ready for primary school, a popular practice is to grant the child more time by letting it repeat kindergarten. However, previous quasi-experimental research demonstrated negative, though diminishing, effects of kindergarten retention on academic learning during the first years of primary school. The present study…

This study examined relationships between specific data on students referred for and placed in the exceptional children's program. The context is a rural North Carolina county and included 206 records of K-6th graders spanning academic years 2007-08, 08-09 and 09-10. The kindergarten entrance ages of students were divided into categories of on…

Grade retention has been the de facto policy for children with academic difficulties in many Latin American countries [Schiefelbein, E., & Wolff, L. (1992). "Repetition and inadequate achievement in Latin America's primary schools: a review of magnitudes, causes, relationships, and strategies." Washington, DC: World Bank.]. In Costa…