The purpose of this research was to examine the relation between students' personality traits and the extent of their engagement and facilitation in peer-led literature circle discussions. The research was guided by two questions. To what extent do reading ability, gender, and personality traits predict the quality of verbal engagement in literature circles? and How do highly engaged participants facilitate discussion in the circles? The researcher video-taped 17 fourth-grade students' literature circle discussions for a total of 136.7 minutes collected on two separate occasions across two weeks. To answer the first question student contributions in discussions were quantified into a measure of quality of verbal engagement score (cf. Costa & Kallick, 2000). This quality of verbal engagement score served as the dependent variable in a multiple regression. The seven independent variables were (1) extroversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) conscientiousness, (4) emotional stability, (5) openness, (6) reading ability, and (7) gender. The quantitative analysis in this study revealed that emotional stability was the only significant variable that predicted higher quality of verbal engagement. A post hoc analysis that included group size as an additional variable revealed that groups composed of three members correlated with higher overall quality of verbal engagement. The second …

With the advent of No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002 and its mandates for annual yearly progress for all students, many districts and schools in Texas have had difficulty elevating African American and Hispanic students’ scores. The current study examined these students’ achievement on the annual Texas high-stakes measure as a function of a numerical construct that aligns the race/ethnicity of students when the teacher race is White. Earlier studies have shown that racial/ethnic compatibility between students and teachers improves student achievement in the primary grades. The study, which was set in 10 north Texas school districts and 30 high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, examined African American and Hispanic students’ achievement on the Texas state assessments in reading and mathematics over a 10-year period. District performance data came from 4,664,192 African American, Hispanic, and White students and 222, 834 White teachers. Campus level data encompassed 188,839 10th graders, 93,573 eighth graders, and 40,083 fourth graders, and 20,471 White teachers. Analysis revealed that, as the ratios of African American and Hispanic students to White teachers increased, the percentages of these two student groups passing the Texas assessments decreased. These patterns differed for White students whose passing percentages increased …