Secondary school students often only use the rules for doing scientific inquiry when prompted, as if they fail to see the point of doing so. This qualitative design study explores conditions to address this problem in school science inquiry. Dutch students (N = 22, aged 14-15) repeatedly consider the quality of their work: in a conventional,…

Static reading labels are problematic not only because youths demonstrate varying reading skills and identities across secondary classrooms but also because being labeled as "struggling" can undermine literacy learning. Little research has investigated how "struggling" and "proficient" readers' interactions with…

This study examined the effectiveness of the iPad app Mathspace on high school students' algebra computation and skill maintenance. The participants in this study were four ninth grade students enrolled in beginning algebra at a large, urban high school. All four students were struggling to obtain grade-level algebra skills and were reported by…

This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of a combined tutoring and mentoring intervention for urban, low-income Black youth during the transition to high school. Participants were 118 ninth-grade students (experimental n = 69; comparison n = 49). After 7 months in the intervention program, students in the experimental group showed…

Learning how to give effective feedback can be a difficult task for teacher leaders. This is especially true for what is called "hard feedback"--that is, feedback that challenges the teacher's practice and therefore may cause some level of professional discomfort. Educators at the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Learning have…

Prior research suggests that summer learning loss among low-income children contributes to income-based gaps in achievement and educational attainment. We present results from a randomized experiment of a summer mathematics program conducted in a large, high-poverty urban public school district. Children in the third to ninth grade (N = 263) were…

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…

Sustained professional development can support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) reform. The authors describe a 3-year study of sustained professional development for 3 diverse urban schools across the salient factors of fidelity of implementation of project-based learning, development of professional learning communities,…

This study investigated the relationship between academic achievement scores for Hispanic and all students within Tennessee. The study compared the measurement of achievement scores by the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) on standardized Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) evaluations for 5th-grade students and Gateway exams…

This study compared the occupational aspirations of beginning high school students by gender and ethnicity, and examined the relationship between the educational demands of the occupations desired by students and their academic performance before and after entering high school. Desired occupations were obtained from 662 entering 9th-grade students…

Use of external vendors to implement school reform and address student achievement in urban secondary schools has not been studied. This quasi-experimental longitudinal study focused on changes in student achievement among urban 9th grade students during the 2010-2011 school year. The theoretical framework was the transformational model of using…

To teach science writing effectively, scholars encourage combining writing to learn with applications of the science writing heuristic. How teachers learn to do so remains under-examined. This essay follows a cohort of ninth-grade science teachers who collaborated in a project to develop, test, and revise such a combination of writing prompts for…

Studies of when youth classify academic achievement in racial terms have focused on the racial classification of behaviors and individuals. However, institutions--including schools--may also be racially classified. Drawing on a comparative interview study, we examine the school contexts that prompt urban black students to classify schools in…

While participating in single- and mixed-gender science and mathematics classes, ninth-grade urban high school students' (n = 118) academic self-concept, self-efficacy, and school climate perceptions were examined. Their perceptions were measured quantitatively from the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics (modified for Science) Attitude and the Patterns…

The purpose of this research is to study the long-run impacts (i.e. on educational attainment) of a freshman math intervention called "double-dose algebra". The intervention was conducted in 2003 and 2004 within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), a large, poor urban school district. In response to low passing rates in 9th grade algebra,…