Academic Problems

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has placed a tremendous amount of pressure on teachers, administrators, parents and students to assist students in learning the state's standards by demonstrating proficiency on the state's assessments. If this doesn’t occur, schools and districts face progressively increasing sanctions when they fail to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP). There is a huge number of research studies that practitioners can utilize to improve the performance of all students. However, deciding on which studies to select and utilize is a daunting task. There is a statistical technique called meta-analysis, which can analyze and summarize thousands of research studies to identify the most effective teaching and learning activities. For example, in the book, "What Works in Schools - Translating Research into Action", Robert Marzano reported that after analyzing thousands of research studies, he identified three broad factors that effect student achievement, which are depicted in the following table where many factors are hyperlinked to more detailed resources/explanations: 

Academic problems are usually identified when a student doesn't learn what's expected of him/her on the state's standards, based on performance on the district's assessments and the state's standards-based assessments, or when a student does not perform well on teacher-developed or other curriculum-based tests or assessments.. NCLB's mandated assessments in reading, math and science have placed a particular emphasis on preventing and addressing problems in these subjects. 

The hyperlinked tabs on the left hand side will assist teachers, aides, support staff, administrators, parents, Intervention and Referral Services (I&RS) / Individual Education Plan (IEP) teams in accessing these academic resources. Clicking on the tabs on the left will provide stakeholders with corresponding resources to prevent and address academic problems.