We studied how the distal policy mechanisms of curricular aims and objectives articulated in official curriculum documents influenced classroom instruction, and the factors that were associated with the enactment of those curricular aims and objectives. The study was set in the U.S. context, where there is an ambitious effort to transform…

Mandates to improve curriculum and instruction and incorporate technology in teaching U.S. K-12 students have failed to improve math proficiency as measured by standardized assessments. Still, 40-60% need remedial coursework in college. Past efforts have focused on incorporating specific technologies. The SAMR approach redirects the effort to…

The passage to middle school has been identified as a confusing period for adolescents, involving a series of major transitions. A new variable that permeates these already lofty transitions is the firm entrenchment of Generation Alpha in the middle grades classroom, a cohort that includes anyone born from 2010 onward, making them the first…

Scholars have examined the effects of same-gender teachers on student achievement, but the findings are mixed. In this study, we use 7 years of administrative data from students in elementary and middle schools (i.e., Grades 3 through 8) in Indiana to test links between gender matching and student achievement. We find that female teachers are…

Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

Mandates to improve curriculum and instruction have failed to produce mathematically proficient students, with 40-60% needing remedial coursework in college, despite incorporation of technology. The SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) model redirects technological focus away from specific technologies to how technology is…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to provide school district leaders and policymakers information of the impact grade configuration had on academic performance using math and ELA ILEARN scores over a three-year period. The study included data from 585 schools that were classified into four groups: Elementary Setting, Intermediate Setting,…

Prior to the 2010 release of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), the curricular landscape in the United States consisted of an assortment of individual state standards that as a collection reflected little consensus as to the grade placement of specific mathematical content. As CCSSM has now been used as the foundation for…

This study examined Indiana public middle school principals' perceptions of school conditions and stakeholders' attitudes regarding middle-grade lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Principals' responses revealed that inclusive school environments and caring faculty members were prominent factors in successfully…

Recent federal data shows disparities among school discipline by race. This has been a long running concern in many arenas. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) provides a positive aspirational approach to student discipline instead of taking a more penal-based approach. This paper reviews the implementation of PBIS and queries…

Value-added metrics or models (VAMs) are an important component of the teacher evaluation process that evaluators use to determine the value teachers add to their students' academic achievement. VAMs are used to arrive at a score that is derived from the number of the teachers' students who pass and/or fail a standardized assessment. While prior…

While there have been numerous studies of teachers' lived experiences, the LGBTQ+- teaching community continues to be underrepresented within this literature (Mayo, 2008). More specifically, empirical evidence regarding LGBTQ+ preservice teachers' (PST) experiences and their induction is nearly all, but absent. This is of great importance to…

We can see why educators are drawn to making; maker environments hold tremendous potential for engaging learners in both (a) building and representing their knowledge and (b) fostering opportunities for seeing the world in new ways. This potential reflects what our team of middle school teachers, university professors, and graduate students…

The purpose of this study was to determine how placement, professional development, and the years of experience of special education teachers impacted the standardized test scores of special education students. This was done by comparing the type of placement of students, mainstream (80+% of the day), co-teaching, separate classroom (100%) and…

Findings from experimental studies have increasingly been used to inform policy in school settings. Thus far, the populations in many of these studies are typically defined in a cross-sectional context; namely, the populations are defined in the same academic year in which the study took place or the population is defined at a fixed time point.…