The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing…

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that may influence middle school choir directors' (MSCDs) sense of self-efficacy. Survey participants (N = 448) who were members of one of three private and active MSCD social media groups completed a questionnaire designed to elicit responses about their senses of self-efficacy and demographic…

Middle school is one of the most important times during which students gain knowledge. However, a large proportion of adolescents have continued to complete middle school without mastering essential knowledge of, and skills in, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Adolescents who miss school in the 30-60 days leading up to high-stakes exams…

Purpose: This study aims to provide quantitative knowledge concerning the leadership of Black women principals in American secondary schools. We examined (1) the demographic composition of the schools in which Black women principals serve, (2) these principals' instructional leadership behaviors, (3) the collective responsibility among teachers in…

In early February, music educators from across the Buckeye state convened in Cleveland for the annual Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) Professional Development Conference. This year's OMEA Graduate Research Forum featured Dr. Kenneth Elpus, renowned music education scholar, as the keynote speaker. Dr. Elpus is associate professor of music…

Education has wide-ranging benefits to both the individual and wider society. This article investigates the consequences of terrorist incidents on whether households can further their children's schooling. Using both the Global Terrorism Database and Pakistan's Social and Living Standards Measurement, we find that persistent exposure to terrorism…

The causal-comparative research study examined if academic achievement differs between African American 8th-grade students in schools where they constitute the majority versus the minority in Clarendon County, South Carolina. The research questions investigated 8th-grade African American students' academic performance in English Language Arts and…

Disengagement is a concept that captures the gradual behavioral, affective, and cognitive distancing from school, and is thus an early indicator of students being at risk for dropout. Based on a social identity framework, we predicted that higher social identification with the class and a positive classroom climate would be associated with lower…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the demographic characteristics of middle school students on their mathematics performance on the STAAR examination. More specifically, this study examined the effect of the variables gender, ethnicity, and at-risk status, separate and collectively, on the four mathematics components…

Noncognitive constructs such as self-efficacy, social awareness, and academic engagement are widely acknowledged as critical components of human capital, but systematic data collection on such skills in school systems is complicated by conceptual ambiguities, measurement challenges and resource constraints. This study addresses this issue by…

School climate describes the quality of the school environment. School climate is a construct that refers to the perceived structural, interpersonal, and learning aspects of a school; a positive school climate is associated with school success and academic achievement (Hoy & Hannum, 1997), prosocial development (Koth et al., 2008), and…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an integral measure of academic progress across the nation and over time. It is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subjects such as civics, mathematics, reading, and U.S. history. The program also provides…

In post-structurally informed research, the answer to the widely documented 'achievement gap' among ethnic minorities has been a critique of educational institutions' monocultural discourse and its exclusionary effects, thus highlighting a contingent, "discursive" conception of diversity. However, in this empirical article, 10- to…

Findings from experimental studies have increasingly been used to inform policy in school settings. Thus far, the populations in many of these studies are typically defined in a cross-sectional context; namely, the populations are defined in the same academic year in which the study took place or the population is defined at a fixed time point.…

Background/Context: Historians of education have chronicled the essential link between schools and communities from a variety of perspectives, exploring how ideology, material conditions, and political struggles have shaped public education. Viewing school reform historically allows us to see how schools are tied to their particular contexts,…