A large proportion of high schools across the country have adopted education and career planning requirements intended to help students prepare for postsecondary education and to facilitate successful transitions to the labor market. This study used student and counselor survey responses from a nationally representative longitudinal dataset to…

This Study Snapshot highlights key findings from a study that seeks to provide Arizona policymakers with national evidence about the education and career planning elements associated with students' college-going behaviors. This correlational study used nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to examine the…

The "Education and Career Planning in High School: A National Study of School and Student Characteristics and College-Going Behaviors" study examined the relationships between students' participation in three core elements of education and career planning during high school and their application, course-taking, and enrollment behaviors…

Special education case managers experience barriers to community and vocational resources when writing Individualized Education Plan (IEP) transition plans. Lack of procedural information and coordination of transition services create obstacles that impact the quality of IEP planning and postsecondary outcomes for students with disabilities.…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive, single case study was to explore how K-8 teachers, lead teachers, and school administrators in an Arizona school district experienced shared leadership and described its influence on student and school success. The theoretical foundation that provided a lens for this study was the theory of shared…

This study explored the perceptions of district superintendents in Texas and Arizona concerning the internship activities of superintendent candidates they supervised. Twenty superintendents agreed to participate in interviews. Five uniform questions were presented during the interviews. A qualitative analysis of interview responses is shared, and…

Our classrooms haven't kept pace with innovation. The Ford Model T represented breakthrough technology in its day--more than 100 years ago--but it wouldn't serve us well today. Likewise, our traditional classroom model from the same era doesn't work well for far too many students and teachers. In fact, as a result of this outdated model, it is…

In anticipation of the 2020-21 school year, states have been creating and updating guidance for district and school reopening plans. This policy update outlines how state guidelines informed by public health guidelines and existing data on the state spread of COVID-19 established a process for engaging stakeholders, a menu of approaches to…

The planning and implementation of effective transition services for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have emerged as crucial aspects of middle school special education. This action research study examines the impact of professional development and collaborative practices on improving transition services for middle school students with…

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) grants states more authority over their school accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hence, states have an opportunity to design improved school rating systems. Three of the most important improvements that states can make are to ensure that their accountability systems: (1)…

This mixed-methods study examines the language ideologies of 28 preschool educators in their first month transitioning from English-only to dual language education (DLE). Using the language ideology survey developed by [Fitzsimmons-Doolan, S. (2011). "Language ideology dimensions of politically active Arizona voters: an exploratory…

On April 3, 2017, sixteen states (Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Vermont) and the District of Columbia submitted their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) state accountability plans to either the US Department of…

Despite the central role schools have played in the resettlement of refugees, we know little about how principals, teachers, parents, and staff at community-based organizations interpret and negotiate national immigration policy and state education policies. Combing critical discourse analysis (CDA) and actor-network theory (ANT), we capture how…

Digital multimodal projects (DMPs) are both common and popular. Adolescents and young adults compose digitally and multimodally in their daily lives, and digital multimodal composition projects are incorporated in K-12 (Smith, 2017, 2018) and university settings (Balaman, 2018; Dzekoe, 2017), including writing programs (Blakely, 2016; Ericsson et…

In four years of managing the Northern Arizona University (NAU) Student Service Center--a one stop shop--from concept to fruition, the author has collected some tips and tricks and a toolbox of key components for success. The NAU Service Center journey started in 2012, when university leadership came together for a two-year concept review that…