Many school administrators in the United States continue to struggle with students not meeting the pass rate on statewide assessments. This study examined the effectiveness of a Tier 2 reading intervention, the Wilson Reading System (WRS) that was implemented at a local Virginia school for 1 semester to address the low pass rate on the statewide reading assessments. The framework for this study was based on the multi-tiered systems of support and the response to intervention model. A quasi-experimental pre-post research design was used to examine the differences on two reading assessments after completing the 16-week WRS program. A multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine the change between the 8th grade reading Student Growth Assessment (SGA) pretest and posttest scores, as well as the Lexile scores from the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) of the 82 8th grade students that received the WRS intervention. The results indicated a significant difference in the SGA (p < .005) and the SRI Lexile reading pretest and posttest scores (p < .005). These findings led to a recommendation to the school district leadership team to expand their reading intervention program at the middle school and to adequately train teachers on using the WRS. If students can maintain their respective reading grade level, students will be able to not only pass statewide reading assessments but also succeed in other school subjects, increasing the opportunity for students to graduate from high school and obtain successful careers.

This study focuses on the Alberta environmental site assessment process for salt contamination resulting from pipeline failures in the boreal forest of Alberta. A complex saltwater spill site is used as a case study to determine the effects of various parameters of interest, including electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio. This study reviews the practical efficacy of the Alberta environmental site assessment process to ensure sites meet the legislated requirement for remediation closure in a timely and environmentally sound manner. The study includes a comparison of various parameters of interest on a case study site collected over a three-year period and reviews available remediation alternatives. The study provides a summary interpretation of how the existing regulatory process affects decisions to ensure site decontamination and sustainability of the boreal forest ecosystem where the upstream oil and gas industry operate, and includes recommendations for policy improvement.

School professionals are faced with addressing social behavioral concerns across multiple school settings with growing frequency. There is a need for efficient and effective methods to support students exhibiting challenging behavior. Tier -II interventions, such as Check-in/Check-out, can be implemented efficiently in schools with sufficient systems in place. However, these interventions are generally more effective for students whose problem behavior is more sensitive to adult attention. This study evaluated the effects of the Academic and Behavior Check-in/Check-out (ABC) intervention, a Tier-II intervention designed to provide additional support for students emitting behavior that is more sensitive to escape from academic tasks, relative to CICO using an ABAB reversal design. Functional assessment procedures corroborated that the behavior of three middle school students was in part motivated by escape from tasks. Implementation of ABC with all subjects resulted in improvements in academic engagement and reductions in problem behavior relative to CICO. Additionally, the ABC intervention was implemented with high fidelity and was rated favorably by stakeholders.

This investigation used a one-group pretest-posttest design to examine the relationship between a tier three reading intervention program (i.e., a program designed for students that have failed to respond to regular (tier one) and resource (tier two) supports), and grade-level reading gains, as measured using the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (Fountas & Pinnell, 2010), for 140 students between grades two and four. All students included in this study began well-below their expected grade-level in reading (i.e., two or more grade-levels below). In order to describe the gains made in grade-level reading ability, the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (Fountas & Pinnell, 2010) was used pretest and posttest to track reading gains. Results from descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis H tests, Mann-Whitney U tests, t-tests, and a multiple regression were indicative of positive reading gains. Approximately 74% of participants achieved grade-level reading gains that had the potential to close the reading gap (i.e., 0.75 grade-levels or more as measured using the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (Fountas & Pinnell, 2010)). These results were similar for all participants regardless of gender, diagnosis status (i.e., garden-variety poor reader, physical disability, and learning/attentional disability) or first language status (i.e., English as an additional language or English). This study provides preliminary evidence that this intervention is improving reading outcomes for tier three students. Moving forward, stakeholders of this division would be encouraged to develop a well-designed, structured mixed-methods research study with standardized assessment measures and planned follow-up.

Thesis advisor: Mary E. Walsh / Poverty negatively impacts health, emotional wellbeing, and educational outcomes for children and creates an opportunity gap between children living in poverty and their wealthier peers (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2016). To close the opportunity gap, schools are encouraged to adopt a systemic approach that addresses both academic and non-academic barriers to learning (Adelman 2018). Integrated Student Support (ISS) models have emerged as one of the most effective systemic school-based interventions (Moore et al., 2018). ISS interventions use various strategies to address the continuum of student needs. Tiered intervention frameworks are one strategy geared towards categorizing risk levels and services by their respective levels of intensity. Tiered interventions commonly focus on academic and social-emotional domains. However, their social-emotional focus is often limited to behavior and their categorization of students is deficit-focused (Freeman et al., 2017). City Connects, one ISS intervention implemented in high-poverty urban districts, uses a tiered intervention framework that encompasses the whole child and incorporates strengths as well as risks. City Connects assigns a tier to strength/risk levels evidenced by students at the beginning of each school year. While City Connects has demonstrated robust positive effects on student outcomes, little is known about annual tier level. In the current study, repeated measures latent class analysis (RMLCA) identified patterns of tier change over five years during which students attended City Connects elementary schools in one district. Multinomial regression and chi-square analyses investigated the relationship of social-emotional strengths, needs, and services to the Tier Change Profiles. Overall, more than half of students changed tier between time points. The most commonly exhibited tier change was increasing/decreasing tier by one. RMLCA findings indicated that students facing lower risk at baseline, exhibited low risk over time, while students facing the highest risk exhibited the greatest volatility in risk over time. Students who had more social-emotional strengths than needs were more likely to exhibit Tier Change Profiles of low risk over time but having more social-emotional needs than strengths was not predictive of Tier Change Profile. Among other findings, outcomes suggest that acknowledging and bolstering strengths play a significantly positive role in developmental trajectories. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Improving the spectral-efficiency of aeronautical telemetry has been a principal area of research over the last several years due to the increasing demand for more data and the limitation of available spectrum. These efforts have lead to the development of the ARTM Tier 1 SOQPSK and Tier II Multi-h CPM waveforms which improve the spectral efficiency by two and three times, as compared to legacy PCM/FM, while maintaining similar detection efficiency. Now that more spectrally efficient waveform options are becoming available, another challenge is to further increase the detection performance. Better detection efficiency translates into additional link margin that can be used to extend the operating range, support higher data throughput, or significantly improve the quality of the received data. It is well known that Forward Error Correction (FEC) is one means of achieving this objective at the cost of additional overhead and increased receiver complexity. However, as mentioned above, spectral efficiency is also vitally important meaning that the FEC must also have a low amount of overhead. Unfortunately, low overhead and high coding gain are generally conflicting trades, although recent work has shown that Turbo Product Codes (TPC) are a particularly attractive candidate. Computer simulations predict that very impressive gains in detection performance are possible for a relatively small increase in bandwidth. The main drawbacks are the additional complexity of the decoding circuitry and an increase in receive side latency. This paper presents the latest simulation and hardware performance results of PCM/FM, SOQPSK, and Multi-h CPM with TPC.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / It is widely recognized that telemetry channels, particularly airborne channels, are afflicted by multipath propagation effects. It has also been shown that adaptive equalization can be highly effective in mitigating these effects. However, numerous other factors influence the behavior of adaptive equalization, and the type of modulation employed is certainly one of these factors. This is particularly true on modulations that exhibit different operating bandwidths. Computer simulations using the Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) have recently been reported for PCM/FM, ARTM Tier 1 SOQPSK, and Tier II SOQPSK. These encouraging results have led to a hardware implementation of a CMA equalizer. This paper presents the latest results from this work.

abstract: ABSTRACT Due to variation that exists in providing Tier 2 reading intervention instruction, the purpose of the study was to identify processes and instructional strategies currently being utilized by K-2 teachers of the Gallup, New Mexico elementary schools. 17 teachers from 9 of the 10 elementary schools participated in the study. A survey instrument was designed and administered using Survey Monkey as the tool to collect the data on how teachers are implementing Tier 2 reading intervention instruction. Research Question 1 asked how teachers are currently implementing Tier 2 reading interventions as far as structure/processes, lesson planning, and collaboration. The highest percentages of teachers reported the following: one additional staff assisting grade level teachers, group sizes of 4-6 students, progress monitoring 6 or more times a year, using DIBELS scores for student placement, utilizing ability groups within the grade level with each having its own instructors, and instruction being provided 5 days a week for 30-35 minutes. Research Question 2 asked for teachers' opinions as to using available staff, instructions for benchmark students, and the amount and usefulness of meetings. A majority of teachers agreed to using all available staff, that accelerated learning opportunities are being provided to students performing at the benchmark level, and that meetings are occurring frequently and are useful. Research Question 3 inquired as to practices and processes teachers feel are effective as well as their recommendations for improving instruction and for professional development. Effective practices reported include: using phonics, decoding, and fluency; small group instruction; multi-sensory instruction or hands-on activities; Linda-Mood Bell programs; data analysis to group students; the Project Read program; word family/patterns; sight words; comprehension; materials and curriculum provided; and consistency with holding interventions daily. Though all reported feeling moderately to very confident in their ability to teach reading, they recommended that they learn more current, non-traditional strategies as well as receive more training in familiar approaches like ELL strategies, differentiated instruction, learning centers, and identifying reading difficulties. After a review of the data, the researcher recommends training teachers to conduct their own research to seek out strategies, programs, and resources; investing in and implementing an effective commercially produced Tier 2 program; and for teams to devote more time in developing, sharing, and revising lesson plans. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Administration and Supervision 2016

Background: There are few studies on the uptake of non-invasive prenatal screening, but those available suggest substantial variation in uptake in the initial years in which it was offered. There is a need to update the earlier evidence and determine whether there has been any change in usage trends as the number of users have increased. This will help inform policy makers about NIPT uptake under currently existing policies and guidelines which can help inform whether to maintain or refine policies on NIPT. Objectives: The primary objective of this thesis was to investigate recent trends in NIPT utilization, and the secondary objective was to identify differences between pregnant individuals aged 40 years and above and/or with a history of previous aneuploidy who opted for first-tier (first-line screening) or second-tier (contingent screening) NIPT and pregnant individuals aged less than 40 years with no history of previous aneuploidy. Methods: This retrospective cohort study used a province wide birth registry from Ontario and the population studied comprised pregnant individuals with an expected date of delivery from August 1st, 2016 to March 31st, 2020. Results: Of 536,748 pregnant individuals resident in Ontario during the study period, 27,733 were classified as high-risk of giving birth to a baby with a chromosomal aneuploidy and 509,015 were classified as low-risk of giving birth to a baby with a chromosomal aneuploidy. Uptake of NIPT has increased every year since 2016. We found substantial variation in NIPT between regions within the province. Highest uptake was found in urban areas, highest neighbourhood of income and education quintiles, high-risk population, among those with a prenatal care visit in the first trimester, multiple pregnancy, multigravidity, body mass index within the normal range (18.5-24.9 kg/m2), and OHIP funding. Conclusion: Our results suggest a need to provide more education/training about NIPT and funding eligibility to health professionals and pregnant individuals, including low-risk pregnant individuals in the first-tier (first-line screening) NIPT funding policy, to ensure equitable assess.

ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The optimum detector for shaped offset QPSK (SOQPSK) is a trellis detector which has high complexity (as measured by the number of detection filters and trellis states) due to the memory inherent in this modulation. In this paper we exploit the cross-correlated, trellis-coded, quadrature modulation (XTCQM) representation of SOQPSK-TG to formulate a reduced complexity detector. We show that a factor of 128 reduction in the number of trellis states of the detector can be achieved with a loss of only 0.2 dB in bit error rate performance as compared to optimum at P(b) = 10^(-5).