Pacing guides are commonplace yet controversial in American public schools. For teachers who question their usefulness, one means to circumvent them is to exercise autonomy in pedagogical decision-making, though doing so comes with challenges. Through interviews, we examined how 87 gifted and general education 4th and 5th grade math and…

Understanding the extent to which youth and families experienced COVID-related stress requires accounting for prior levels of stress and other associated factors. This is especially important for military families, which experience unique stressors and may be reluctant to seek outside help. In this prospective study, we examined the role of…

This study addressed the effects of Strategies for Teaching Reading, Information, and Vocabulary Effectively (STRIVE), a distributed professional development (PD) model designed to help teachers implement reading comprehension and vocabulary practices in fourth grade social studies classes. Schools (n = 81 schools, n = 235 teachers, n = 4,757…

Using state-level data, we report unadjusted and adjusted odds ratio of special education (SPED) trends in Tennessee from 2009-2019 for students in grades 3-8 by 3 language groups: native English speakers (NES), English-proficient bilinguals (EPB) and Current English learners (Current EL). We report trends across all SPED disability categories and…

Recent advances in automated writing evaluation have enabled educators to use automated writing quality scores to improve assessment feasibility. However, there has been limited investigation of bias for automated writing quality scores with students from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds. The use of biased scores could contribute to…

The present multiprobe single-case design study investigated the impact of integrating evidence-based behavioral supports into a small-group reading intervention on student engagement and disruptive behavior for six upper elementary students with co-occurring reading difficulties and inattention. Visual analysis suggested a functional relation for…

We investigated whether worked examples could be used to reduce cognitive load on mathematics learners who may have reduced available cognitive resources due to experiencing anxiety or excess stress. Across 2 days, 280 fifth-grade students learned from a difficult lesson on ratio, half of whom reviewed worked examples at key problem-solving…

Open-ended verbal creativity assessments are commonly administered in psychological research and in educational practice to elementary-aged children. Children's responses are then typically rated by teams of judges who are trained to identify original ideas, hopefully with a degree of inter-rater agreement. Even in cases where the judges are…

This study explores whether teacher reports of executive functions predict change in reading performance (i.e., reading development) for elementary-aged students when controlling for direct assessments of executive functions and for teacher reports of students' literacy skills. Prior research has raised problems with the construct validity of…

The purpose of this study was to understand how a school-based personalized learning approach can help improve literacy achievement among middle grades students in a rural area. This study followed two cohorts of schools serving students in grades 6-8 in northeast Tennessee for one year each (2018-19 and 2021-22), to assess student and school…

Solving mathematical problems is cognitively complex, involving strategy formulation, solution development, and the application of learned concepts. However, gaps in students' knowledge or weakly grasped concepts can lead to errors. Teachers play a crucial role in predicting and addressing these difficulties, which directly influence learning…

School-aged English Learners (ELs) are faced with the challenging task of acquiring a foreign language while simultaneously reading academically demanding literature. Therefore, the current research aimed to examine the relation between the rate of grammatical tense marking errors made by ELs and their performance on measures of reading…

This study examines differences in English language comprehension, reading fluency, and executive functions among Spanish-English bilinguals with reading difficulties. Reading difficulties examined included general reading difficulties, defined by low word reading and reading comprehension, and specific-reading comprehension difficulties, defined…

Socio-emotional constructs have been receiving increased attention as contributors to children's literacy development. However, in comparison to positive socio-emotional constructs, negative socio-emotional constructs have been understudied with respect to their role in reading achievement in both dual language learners (DLLs) and English speakers…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English (DISE)," an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach "DISE"…