On January 13, 2023 the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) released high school graduation rates for the State of Florida and the District. The FY22 Federal High School Graduation Rate includes standard diplomas but excludes special diplomas and General Education Diplomas (GEDs). Students with Disabilities (SWD) on Access Points curriculum are…

Response to intervention (RtI) is touted as an equity-focused provision of special education policy that holds promise for reducing overrepresentation and providing academic opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. However, teachers working to implement RtI have encountered complex challenges that stifle equitable…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of a relationship between second-order change leadership behaviors of high school administrators and changes in student achievement on the Florida Standards Assessment English Language Arts/Reading component and the Algebra 1 End of Course examination in two large urban school districts.…

Building upon reflection as a tool for enhanced metacognition, the researcher postulated that a positive correlation would exist between application of a reflection instrument and students' level of academic performance and motivation in an urban high school English class. A statistically insignificant correlation was found between either…

This technical appendix provides additional information about the sample, data, and estimation strategy used for a series of American Educator Panels (AEP) Data Notes published by the RAND Corporation in 2019. The Data Note series is intended to provide brief but incisive analyses of teacher and school leader survey results that may be of…

On January 7, 2020, the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) released high school graduation rates for the State of Florida and the School District of Palm Beach County (District). It should be noted that due to COVID-19, assessment requirements for graduation were waived for FY20 seniors who had yet to meet them. This fact should be kept in…

This cross-sectional, participatory study investigated the sense of community, which refers to attitude of shared communion and unity among members of a group, among administrators and teachers at predominantly African American public high schools in a large urban county in Florida. This study was guided by an impetus of collective action toward…

Scaling in educational settings has tended to focus on replication of external programs with less focus on the nature of adaptation. In this article, we explore the scaling of Personalization for Academic and Social-emotional Learning (PASL), a systemic high school reform effort that was intentionally identified, developed, and implemented with…

In FY19, School District of Palm Beach County (SDPBC) outperformed Florida and four other large urban school districts by maintaining a stable graduation rate from FY18 to FY19. District operated high schools exceeded the Board's Strategic Plan goal of 90% by posting a graduation rate of 91.6%. In this memorandum, table 1 reports the graduation…

In FY17, the School District of Palm Beach County (SDPBC) outperformed Florida and six other large urban school districts for the fourth consecutive year (FY14-FY17), and has consistently increased the graduation rate, including from FY16 to FY17. More importantly, the disparity between White students and their Black and Hispanic peers was reduced…

This comparative case study examines the prevalence of caring practices in two higher performing and two lower performing urban high schools and the contextual factors that helped or hindered the extent to which students felt cared for. We found that higher performing schools demonstrated caring communities, where interpersonal relationships and…

What are the policies, programs and practices that make some high schools in the same state and district context more effective than others? Motivated to understand the differences between schools with similar size and demographics yet different attendance, graduation and levels of student academic growth, the National Center for Scaling Up…

The role of gender, race/ethnicity, and disability category in the relationship between student perceptions of family support of personal growth and school facilitation of student involvement and the development of self-determination was examined in a sample of 190 diverse high school students with disabilities. Results indicated that both school…

Providing ninth-graders with academic and social support can put more students on the graduation path, but it can be challenging for schools and school systems to implement that support routinely and effectively. This brief describes how Broward County Public Schools adopted a community of practice (CoP) approach to improve school-based teams'…

In FY16, the School District of Palm Beach County (SDPBC) outperformed Florida and six other large urban school districts and increased the graduation rate from FY15. The Federal High School Graduation Rate includes standard diplomas but excludes special diplomas and GEDs (General Education Diplomas). This memorandum reports the graduation rates…