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…

This multi-sited ethnographic study, conducted in two Mandarin-English dual language schools in two states in the U.S., investigates how students from diverse social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds perceive and navigate bi/multilingualism through dual language education. Drawing on the scalar analysis of video-recorded student interviews,…

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…

Charter schools continue to expand, particularly in urban communities. To critique the civic side of charter schools, we applied Wilson's counter-public framework from a macro level to analyze the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)- Civics results. We employed a multilevel regression model to ascertain whether Black and…

Five groups rank state charter school environments according to their laws, regulations, funding, and other characteristics, but none rank states by charter student performances on a national test. We rank states by demographically adjusted math and reading performances of charter students in 4th and 8th grade for the period 2009 to 2019 on the…

Critical-thinking development can enhance students' reasoning and thinking abilities, but the extent to which additional critical-thinking instruction can enhance academic performance remains unclear. Therefore, there is a need to investigate whether providing additional critical-thinking instruction can improve academic performance. This study…

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…

The opportunity gap continues to widen in the U.S. education setting due to the ever-growing diversification of student populations resulting in part from increasing numbers of BIPOC students in schools. Meanwhile, most educators continue to be White middle-class females. In this study, fourth- and fifth-grade students at a K-8 charter school were…

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…

Since the start of the new millennium, many states have launched or expanded private school choice options, permitted and expanded independently operated public charter schools, eased restrictions on homeschooling, and enacted policies that allow and encourage various forms of public school choice. One thing that is not on the rise, unfortunately,…

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…

Objective: Sport is an important source of physical, social and emotional health and well-being among children. Sports participation at school may provide young people with the opportunity to build interpersonal skills and develop supportive social relationships with peers and adults, which may translate to positive experiences during the school…

Despite the importance placed on reading in the classroom, an unacceptable number of students lack the literacy skills essential to succeed in today's knowledge-based economy, putting them at greater risk of persistent unemployment and other forms of economic hardship. The problem is that public charter elementary (K-4) school intervention…