Professional learning should be designed in a way that is responsive to the needs of teachers and intentionally planned with adult learning principles in mind. This article outlines one practitioner's professional journey to redefine how professional learning is designed with best practices in adult learning in mind. Strategies utilized during…

The share of students attending charter schools has been rising. There is evidence that charter school growth has increased socioeconomic segregation of students between schools. In this paper, we assess whether charter school growth affects how students are organized within nearby traditional public schools (TPS). We use administrative data from…

Research on the effectiveness of fidget spinner use in the classroom to increase academic performance and behavior has had mixed results, with no studies evaluating the use of fidget spinners on reading performance. The current study examined the effects of using a fidget spinner on Aimsweb oral reading fluency probes for 66 students in the 3rd…

This qualitative study explored the experience of third through fifth grade teachers that use kinesthetic learning strategies (KLS) in the classroom and their perception of the student learning process. Most studies on kinesthetic learning have been student-centered, and research to examine the perspective of teachers expands our understanding of…

Educators and researchers have been fighting the reading wars for the last century, with battles see-sawing literacy instruction in American schools from phonics to whole language and, most recently, back to phonics again. Over the last decade, 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new "science of reading" laws that require…

This report summarizes the results of kindergarten through fifth grade students' academic achievement outcomes in mathematics and science following four years of campus-level participation in the Launching Elementary Academic Foundations (LEAF) to STEM program. The LEAF to STEM Program consists of three key components that were adapted for K-5…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders often need behavioral supports to facilitate their success in the classroom. One commonly used intervention involves taking brief breaks at targeted times during the day to return to the classroom better prepared for participation. However, research is limited on what should happen while a student…

Background or Context: There is increasing research focusing on dual language (DL) education program policies and practices regarding who has access to bilingualism and whose bilingualism is valued and represented. However, limited research is situated in the context of Chinese-English DL education and its service of emergent bilingual learners…

The integration of knowledge is a function of how we think about the performance of schools to improve learning. Thus, the purpose of this case study is to characterize knowledge integration by a community of leaders in one urban charter school via interactive discourse to improve elementary students' achievement in mathematics and reading. The…

This dissertation analyzes data in order to answer the research question, "Do eighth grade students who have participated regularly in their school band programs for four consecutive years achieve higher scores in New Jersey's Grade Eight PARCC Assessment than students of similar ability who do not play a musical instrument?" Data was…

There's mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students' educational careers seems to make a positive difference. But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school? Existing "race-match" studies fail to…

Although English-Chinese bilingual development has been studied in community contexts, it has not been adequately addressed in the K-12 Chinese immersion classrooms despite the increasing number of Chinese immersion programs across the United States. To inform effective pedagogies in Chinese immersion classrooms, this study reports on a nine-month…

School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York…

The purpose of this study was to examine any relationships between students' perceptions of the effects of school uniforms and student socioeconomic status. A survey was administered to 182 students in a charter school to gather perception information, and a separate survey was administered to parents to gather socioeconomic status information. An…

Curriculum Associates' "i-Ready® Instruction" is a supplemental, online personalized instruction program available for reading and mathematics. The Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO), in collaboration with Century Analytics, implemented a quasi-experimental design (QED) using 2018-19 "i-Ready Diagnostic and…