Background/Context: Many states, school districts, and third-party platforms report measures of school performance. Such school ratings are widely consulted by parents and educators alike. The ratings appear to affect families' choices of where to live and where to enroll students (Bergman and Hill, 2018; Hasan and Kumar, 2019), as well as…

Educators and researchers have long debated the best grade configuration grouping for middle grade students. This study examined school-level differences in reading and mathematics standardized test pass rates for students placed in middle schools versus alternative grade configurations. Latent growth modeling was conducted separately for 6th,…

We evaluated the technical adequacy of oral reading fluency (ORF) probes in which 1,472 middle school students with and without reading difficulties read fluency probes for 60 s versus reading the full passage. Results suggested that the reliability of 60-s probes (rs = 0.75) was not substantively different than full passage probes (rs = 0.77)…

The authors report findings from a systematic observational study of middle school educators (Grades 6-8) in two states who provided reading interventions within Tier 2 and Tier 3 of a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Intervention sessions were coded and analyzed to understand (a) the frequency and type of evidence-based strategies…

City Year is a learning organization committed to the rigorous evaluation of its "Whole School Whole Child" model, which trains and deploys teams of AmeriCorps members to low-performing, urban schools to empower more students to reach their full potential. A third-party study by Policy Studies Associates (PSA) examined the impact of…

Considerable evidence shows the detriments of neighborhood social disorganization for urban youth. Researchers have focused less on potential neighborhood strengths or on the interplay of neighborhood perceptions and objective neighborhood characteristics. The authors examined the presence and perception of positive and negative neighborhood…

While students begin schooling with high engagement levels, these levels begin to drop in the middle years of schooling but appear to recover somewhat in 10th grade, suggesting that the middle years of schooling are an especially vulnerable time in terms of student engagement (Willms et al., 2009). Moreover disengagement is most common in students…

Although the literature on self-esteem has a long and prolific history in Turkey regarding which demographics may influence the self-esteem of adolescents. The research findings are intricate and undermine the need of further research in Turkey. This cross-sectional study re-examined the effects of age, grade level and education level of a mother…

In this paper, we present a closer look at the student achievement trends in the District of Columbia between 2006-07 and 2012-13. We have three main conclusions. First, we find that overall, math scores in the District have improved. The improvements in reading scores during this time frame, however, were primarily limited to the first year after…

Research conclusions concerning predictors of academic success have been, at best, less than convincing. In fact, these conclusions are more conflicting or mixed when emotional constructs are used. As a result, modern curriculum developers as well as classroom instructors seem to deemphasize, if not ignore, the role of the affective domain in…

Community schools are an approach that has been adopted to respond to this educational crisis. By partnering with local agencies, community schools provide students and families with access to healthcare services, educational enhancement and recreational opportunities, family economic supports such as workforce development and income tax…

The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. Strong growth in Hispanic enrollment is expected to continue for decades, according to population projection by the U.S. Census Bureau. Using data from the 2006…