Many studies have examined significant factors associated with school delinquency among adolescents, including relationship violence, property damage, and other serious threats to students' safety. However, students' coping behaviors after being victims of or witnesses to violence and other forms of delinquency have not been thoroughly examined.…

This Statistics in Brief provides information about the occupational expectations of high school freshmen in 2009 and how their expectations changed (or did not) by the spring of 2012. The focus is on expectations for a career in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) field, defined in this report as science, technology,…

Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest partnered with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to examine Arkansas's middle and high school indicators of postsecondary readiness and success, building on an earlier study of these indicators (Hester et al., 2021). Academic indicators include attaining proficiency on state achievement tests,…

Using data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS), this report presents findings both on crime and violence in U.S. public schools and on the practices and programs schools have used to promote school safety. SSOCS collects data from public school principals about violent and nonviolent crimes in their schools. The survey also collects…

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is designed to give attention to substance use among the nation's youth and adults. It is an investigator-initiated study that originated with, and is conducted by, a team of research professors at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Since its onset in 1975, MTF has been funded continuously by…

Despite efforts made by educators and policymakers, disproportionality in special education and discipline persists for low-income, African American students. Through the lens of Multicultural Counseling Theory (MCT), this quantitative study investigated the likelihood of school counselors recommending students for advanced and remedial…

Background/Context: There is broad agreement about the benefits of taking AP and/or IB courses in high school. Nonetheless, student access to such courses remains uneven and inequitable, due largely to the practice of tracking students by perceived "ability." These tracking practices are often defended based on the contention that…

This report includes findings regarding demographic characteristics and academic outcomes of Twilight program students; highlights emerging topics from the student, teacher, and staff surveys; and provides recommendations for future program implementation.

Concerns about the breadth of the U.S. income distribution and limited intergenerational mobility have led to a focus on educational achievement gaps by socio-economic status (SES). Using intertemporally linked assessments from NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], TIMSS [Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey], and…

Background/Context: Given the importance of increasing student participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), there is a need to understand how factors such as student's attitudes toward math and science in middle and high school are linked to their later college and career choices. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine physical activity (PA)/fitness knowledge and its association with PA and sedentary behavior in youth. Method: Eighth grade students from five schools (N = 660) in a midwestern state completed a PE Metrics written test and the Youth Activity Profile to assess PA/fitness knowledge, PA (at school and…

Using student-level administrative data from North Carolina, we explore whether exposure to same-race teachers affects the rate at which Black students receive exclusionary discipline, such as out-of-school suspensions, in-school suspensions, and expulsion. We find consistent evidence that exposure to same-race teachers is associated with reduced…

Extracurricular activity participation has been associated with a multitude of positive outcomes, including school completion, and research suggests that students at risk for school failure are particularly likely to benefit from participation. However, before extracurricular activity participation can be promoted to address such issues,…

We examine the impacts of early college high schools, small schools of choice located on college campuses. These schools provide a no-cost opportunity for students to earn college credit--or a 2-year degree--while in high school. Using rich administrative data on multiple cohorts of students and quasiexperimental methods informed by the…

This occasional paper presents national demographic subgroup data for the 1975-2017 Monitoring the Future (MTF) national survey results on 8th, 10th, and 12th graders' use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. MTF is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health under a series of investigator-initiated, competitive…