Over the last 3 years, the advocacy organization Speech First has filed six lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of bias response teams on the grounds that they violate free speech. Bias response teams are university-wide committees that respond to reports of racially charged incidents on college campuses to promote institutional goals of…

Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression discontinuity design surrounding the exact start and end…

This article examines how important an explicit mission and values framework can be for community-based arts education organizations in times of crises. This argument draws on interview data from early and later points in the COVID-19 pandemic with three community-based arts organizations whose work is deeply rooted in creative youth development…

Positive organizational communication practices in elementary schools can encourage teams to be effective in their work, both individually and collectively. Such practices affect the culture, and consequently, can also promote either joy or consternation in vocation. Such communication is best led by the head of school, who is a major asset in…

The TELL AISD Survey consists of several subscales, or constructs, that contain conceptually similar items. This report explores the relationship between the constructs of principal leadership and general climate by level and for the district overall. Statistically significant relationships between principal leadership and general climate were…

Real-time attention coordination in parent-toddler dyads is often studied in tightly controlled laboratory settings. These studies have demonstrated the importance of joint attention in scaffolding the development of attention and the types of dyadic behaviors that support early language learning. Little is known about how often these behaviors…

This article draws on environmental justice frameworks located in urban planning (Agyeman et al., 2002; Pellow, 2007) and critical place inquiry (Tuck & McKenzie, 2014) to focus on the relationship between green building curriculum, career and technical education, and climate justice. Green building--a rapidly growing field within the…

More students feel safe in their afterschool programs than feel safe during the school day, according to 2017-2018 climate surveys. In addition, in afterschool programs, many desirable climate factors increased from the 2016-2017 school year to the 2017-2018 school year, while they decreased in the school-day environment.

When done reliably and efficiently, measuring school climate can help improve schools' vital signs and help state boards of education realize their goals and objectives for the system as a whole. Moreover, because it is as consequential to schools as checking heart rates and blood pressure are to humans, schools should always use climate measures…

Gender-diverse secondary students (i.e., students in grades 6-11 who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or questioning) continue to report a more challenging school climate than their cisgender peers, according to results from the 2020-2021 AISD Student Climate Survey. This report highlights the largest differences in students' perceptions and…

This executive summary of a full report describes how transgender middle and high school students at AISD feel about their school climates, as reported through the 2017 student climate survey, and how they perform at their schools. [For the full report, see ED629435.]

District-wide surveys are used in a variety of ways around the district and are designed to collect feedback from some of our main district stakeholders. Although there is a general understanding that some of the same topics are examined in these surveys, a comparison of these surveys to determine any direct overlap in survey items has not been…

The CARES (customer-focused, action-oriented, responsive, empathetic, and service-driven) initiative was launched in AISD in 2018-2019 to bring about a culture of respect and inclusiveness throughout the district. The initiative puts an emphasis on positive customer experiences for families, students and staff members. In the spring of 2020, the…

The George W. Bush Institute's School Leadership Initiative (SLI) District Cohort Research Project is a five-year effort with four school districts to test two frameworks--Principal Talent Management (PTM) and Effective Implementation. This collaboration is designed to improve how districts prepare, recruit, support, and retain principals. This…

This report describes the activities and accomplishments of Austin Independent School District's (AISD's) CARES team during the second year of implementation, school year 2019-2020. Highlights include how CARES team members were able to: maintain and in many cases exceed high-quality standards, continue progress monitoring, and provide support and…