The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the relationship between teacher's perceptions of school climate and student achievement of middle school students. Two hundred twenty middle school teachers, from a large urban school district located in the Southwestern region of the US, participated in the "New Jersey School Climate…

Educators play a crucial role in student skill development; hence this dissertation explores incentive-driven public policies and understands the effect that educators have on students. The first chapter estimates relative contributions of the subjective (supervisor observations and student surveys) versus objective (value-added) evaluation…

School-based mental health screening has been identified as a major component of social, emotional, and behavioral multitiered systems of support models, and a promising practice that can be used to address unmet mental health needs of children and adolescents. However, there are frequently noted concerns about the feasibility of implementing…

Equity between racial/ethnic groups has become an important factor in education, and scholar-practitioners have focused on closing the equity gap in both student academics and discipline. Research has shown the inequity in student discipline dating back to the 1950s when schools began to integrate and Black students were allowed to attend the same…

The purpose of this quantitative research was to examine parents, students, and staff perceptions of school climate in urban middle schools and explore if relationships exist between perceived school climate, perceived reading instruction, and reading performance as measured by the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR). The…

This Urban Texas School District Restorative Discipline Practice (RDP) initiative was founded and funded on the description that RDP is designed to proactively build relationships, improve school climate, and reduce suspensions of African American (AA) males. This RDP phenomenon was reactively implemented in a Reset Center where suspended students…

As parents, communities, educators, and policymakers continue to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning in America, many have turned to recently released results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP measures what students know and what they can do in several tested subjects, including reading,…

The purpose of this case study was to explore administrator, teacher, and parent perceptions about the resources needed to increase parental involvement. Leveraging three theoretical frameworks of Epstein's overlapping spheres of influence, the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler model, and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, this study utilized qualitative…

The purpose of this study was to explore administrators' and teachers' experiences and perceptions of how restorative practice strategies impact the execution of school discipline in an urban middle school. This study included a review of data collected from interviews with middle school administrators and teachers in a large school district. A…

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study, which consisted of QUAN [right arrow] to qual investigated the impact of mathematics word problems among African American students in the seventh grade. This study applied a culturally relevant education (CRE) lens to examine how students solve mathematics word problems. Ladson-Billings (1997) and…

Public school leadership requires continued research to ensure the best results for future generations. The perceived leadership style of a principal can impact the students, staff, and community. It is important that the perceived leadership style of a principal is compared to the performance of the campus. The more effective the leader, the more…

This study explores teachers' use of Spanish in sixth-grade bilingual science classrooms at an urban middle school in Texas. We used a case study approach to study how two Spanish-English bilingual teachers utilized Spanish during instruction in a unit on space exploration and their beliefs on Spanish use in English-dominant science classrooms.…

Secondary school administrators are prone to experience stressors that stem from role conflict, accountability standards, student and parental relationships, staff development, and managerial issues. Through the research foundations of McGrath (Stress Cycle), Gmelch (Administrator Stress Cycle), Allison (Coping Preference Scale) and Maslach's…

This report highlights the results of Austin Independent School District's 4th- and 8th-grade students on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card.

This study will examine factors that contribute to the decline in achievement scores in reading and mathematics when students transition from elementary to their first year in middle school or junior high school. It will test the hypothesis that motivation is not a function of mentors, academic support, teams, parental involvement, transition…