The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive, single case study was to explore how K-8 teachers, lead teachers, and school administrators in an Arizona school district experienced shared leadership and described its influence on student and school success. The theoretical foundation that provided a lens for this study was the theory of shared…

Does school participatory budgeting (SPB) increase students' political efficacy? SPB, which is implemented in thousands of schools around the world, is a democratic process of deliberation and decision-making in which students determine how to spend a portion of the school's budget. We examined the impact of SPB on political efficacy in one middle…

We report the results of a convergent validity study examining the externalizing subscale (SRSS-E5, five items) of the adapted Student Risk Screening Scale for Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE 9) with the externalizing subscale of the Teacher Report Form (TRF) with two samples of K-12 students. Results of logistic regression and receiver…

Calls for more civic education have risen alongside political polarization, social injustices, and threats to democracy. Although civic learning opportunities are disproportionately accessible and often not inclusive, one model has shown promising results. Through School Participatory Budgeting, students deliberate and decide how to allocate funds…

This study presents an exemplar for psychometric evaluation and modification of established measures when applied to new populations. Specifically, we describe the use of two subscales (Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale and Math/Science Self-Efficacy Scale) from the Middle School Self-Efficacy Scale (MSSES) as outcome measures in an…

Stealth assessment has been successfully embedded in educational games to measure students' learning in an unobtrusive and supportive way. This study explored the possibility of applying stealth assessment in a digital reading platform and sought to identify potential in-system indicators of students' digital learning outcomes. Utilizing the user…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how special education teachers describe selecting and applying differentiated instructional strategies for students with mild, moderate, to severe disabilities in self-contained classrooms within a school district in Arizona. Jean Piaget's social constructivism theory and Carol Ann…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Title I school performance and effective district leadership and reform strategies. This study focused on the successful attributes and characteristics of principals whose high-performing (the percentage of students that meet or exceed on the AzMERIT assessment) high-poverty schools…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

Marana Middle School in Tucson, Ariz., scrapped its traditional P.E. program that emphasized team sports and shifted to a program that focuses on lifetime fitness, student choice in activities, and nutrition and health education. The program also includes student leadership development and informal community service. As a result, Marana students…