The Social Emotional Health Survey-Secondary-2020 (SEHS-S-2020) is a well-studied option for assessing social emotional health to support students within a multitiered system of school support. While a growing body of literature supports the SEHS-S-2020 measure for assessing student covitality, there is less validation evidence specifically for…

Measures of school-level growth in student outcomes are common tools for assessing the impacts of schools. The vast majority of these measures use standardized tests as the outcome of interest, even though emerging evidence demonstrates the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL). In this article, we present results from using the first…

Few studies have considered academic vocabulary interventions for students who have learning disabilities (LD) and also are English learners (EL). This research explored the effects of the third year of the Creating Habits that Accelerate Academic Language of Students (CHAAOS) vocabulary intervention for eighth-grade students who received English…

With school populations across the country becoming increasingly representative of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, new considerations must be made to promote equitable and engaged science learning for all students (National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine [NAEEM], 2011).…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused schools to shift to virtual or hybrid instruction, thrusting young adolescents into a very different educational environment. Stage-environment fit theory outlines ways in which educational contexts may, or may not, meet the developmental needs of young adolescents. Yet little is known about how virtual environments…

Teacher professional development is considered as one of the key factors for improving the quality of teaching and learning. This study aimed to investigate teachers' participation in technology professional development across the states between 2005 and 2015. The present study explored the differences in students' mathematics achievement scores…

Little is known about the naturalistic development of mindfulness in adolescence and how it relates to changes in emotional well-being. The current longitudinal study examined the development of one dimension of mindfulness, nonreactivity to difficult inner experience (or in more colloquial terms, being able to notice, but "take a step…

Reading Apprenticeship is a model of academic literacy instruction designed by the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd to improve student literacy skills and academic achievement. Based on understandings of the close relationship between curricular reform and professional development, Reading Apprenticeship includes an instructional…

Few studies have considered academic vocabulary interventions for students who have learning disabilities (LD) and also are English Learners (EL). This research explored the effects of the third year of the CHAAOS (Creating Habits that Accelerate the Academic Language of Students) vocabulary intervention for eighth grade students who received…

We investigated general vocabulary and academic vocabulary growth trajectories of adolescent language minority students using an individual growth modeling approach. Our analytical sample included 3161 sixth- to eighth-grade students from an urban school district in California. The language minority students in our sample were classified as…

The research featured in this paper is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, through which Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) has partnered with the CORE districts to conduct research designed to support them in continuous improvement while simultaneously helping to improve policy and practice in California and nationwide.…

The research featured in this paper is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, through which Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) has partnered with the CORE districts to conduct research designed to support them in continuous improvement while simultaneously helping to improve policy and practice in California and nationwide.…

This paper discusses the implementation and evaluation of an innovative professional development program that supported 8th grade mathematics teachers in designing learning activities that assisted students in developing a conceptual understanding of mathematics. Funded by an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the U.S. Department of…

Purpose: This study examined California middle school physical education teachers' (grades 6-8) use of assessments based on state standards to grade their students. Methods: An electronic survey was used to collect data. Results: Of the 309 teachers surveyed, 74% based their assessments on the state physical education standards. Teachers who used…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain a better understanding of how induction programs might effectively support STEM K-8 teacher preparation. American schools are not producing competent STEM graduates prepared to meet employment demands. Over the next decade, STEM employment opportunities are expected to increase twice as fast…