Although lockdown drills are a practice widely used in K-12 public schools across the United States to prepare students and staff to respond to acts of violence, research has only just begun to consider the impacts of these practices on those who participate in them. This study adds to the growing body of literature by examining the potential…

In many parts of the country, enrollment in traditional public schools has fallen to its lowest point in decades. However, states, cities, and school districts have been slow to respond to the reality of empty desks. This report examines trends in school enrollment, focusing on several of America's most populous cities, as well as the budgetary…

Background/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate physical educators' self-reported use, understanding, and confidence with game-based approaches (GBAs) in their K-12 physical education programs. Method: A survey of New York State physical education professionals was conducted that yielded quantitative data on how they used…

Centered on the theories of Carol Dweck (2006) and James Burns (1978), an expanding theory case study approach was used to analyze how growth mindset and transformational leadership influence instructional decisions made specifically for economically disadvantaged students. In addition, analysis of how leaders perceive these decisions to have…

The advances in technology in the past decades have revolutionized the field of K-12 education, and its widespread implementation has given rise to the concurrent need to educate students about its responsible usage. The concept of digital citizenship as applicable to schools includes elements like digital access, digital communication, digital…

This qualitative interview study investigated principals' discursive frames and communications during the COVID-19 pandemic. The six leader interviews that comprise this study's dataset were drawn from a purposeful sample of schools with variable educator job satisfaction survey results. A combination of deductive and inductive coding of the…

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) entitles students with disabilities to a free appropriate public education. Students with disabilities often require additional support to enable them to achieve academic and functional goals relative to their nondisabled peers. These legally protected supports and services all add up…

At their best, K-12 public school systems can be engines of social and economic mobility. Unfortunately, schools in lower-income districts -- whose students have the greatest academic needs -- often receive less funding than their counterparts in more affluent districts. Discussions about closing these funding gaps usually zoom all the way out to…

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, increasing attention has been paid to rural communities. For our study, we used a multicase study approach that included five states to study the difference between the rhetoric about the need to focus more attention on rural communities soon after the 2016 election and the practiced reality of state…

Non-compliance is a challenge for practitioners serving children with and without disabilities. Many interventions have been developed to increase compliance. High-probability request sequences (HPRS), an antecedent-based intervention that is based on behavioral momentum theory, is one way to increase compliant behavior. HPRS includes the…

The problem addressed in this study was the challenging lived experiences, beliefs, and perceptions of K-12 public school teachers from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state areas who were precipitously forced to move from face-to-face to online during the COVID-19 pandemic despite their lack of skills and preparedness to perform in…

Federal law defines English learner (EL) eligibility differently for Indigenous, compared to non-Indigenous, students, allowing for broader entry into the EL category, along with its accompanying resources and services. We interviewed EL leaders from 25 state departments of education to learn about their level of understanding of the…

This proposal sought to understand the decision-making of the K-12 public school super-intendents during the COVID-19 crisis and periods of recovery. Western New York school district leaders participated in focus groups organized according to the New York State Department of Education classifications of high-, average-, and low-needs districts. By…

As school systems work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, states continue to grapple with persistent teacher shortages, a lack of teachers of color in the workforce, and high turnover rates undermining recruitment efforts. Teachers' effectiveness and their likelihood of staying in teaching are strongly influenced by the quality of preparation…

School district boundaries define more than just the area where a certain group of children attends a given set of schools. They also determine the taxing jurisdiction that supports those schools with local property taxes. Big differences in property value can lead to large funding gaps, even between neighboring districts. These disparities in…