Secondary course assignment substantially determines a teacher's day-to-day work life, incentivizing them to realize their personal desires, which prior work shows tend to be working with more advanced students. Teachers have varying abilities to enact these desires, potentially due to their political capital, which is largely influenced by…

The 2013 North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey (NCYRBS) was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and adapted by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) to monitor health-risk behaviors and to measure progress toward achieving Healthy North Carolina 2020 objectives. The survey, administered in…

Researchers have found that self-concept in students fluctuates during times of change, such as the physical transition between elementary school and junior high. Since Catholic school students typically do not have the physical transition or social network changes in junior high, it was hypothesized that their self-concepts would not fluctuate.…

This article reports on analyses examining contextual influences on parenting with an ethnically and geographically diverse sample of parents (predominantly mothers) raising 387 children (49% ethnic minority; 51% male) in high-risk communities. Parents and children were followed longitudinally from first through tenth grades. Contextual influences…