This article explores issues that had to be confronted over a three-year period in terms of two New York State funded grants for which I was the evaluator. Major, critical challenges are presented, described, and discussed. Specifically, the paper addresses issues related to lack of planning at the grant design stage that resulted in challenges…

This research examines the specialized knowledge of reading comprehension articulated by 12 middle school English language arts teachers sampled from three different regions of the United States and representing various levels of teaching experience. Using detailed interviews, concept mapping, and think aloud methods, we identified salient…

Over the past three decades, much of the conversation about LGBTQ students in schools has centered on safety--anti-bullying policies, the "safe space" of gay-straight alliances, and "safe zones" marked by rainbow-colored stickers on classroom doors. In this article, Michael Sadowski argues that it's time to move beyond safety…

This research explored Korean early study abroad students' school adjustment in the United States, as well as how their microsystems (family, peer, school) affect their experiences. To understand their experience, we posed two research questions: 1) What are Korean early study abroad students' experience like in adjusting to American middle…

In this paper, we focus on topological approaches to space and we argue that experiences with topology allow middle school students to develop a more robust understanding of orientation and dimension. We frame our argument in terms of the phenomenological literature on perception and corporeal space. We discuss findings from a quasi-experimental…

"Low threshold, high ceiling" tasks are accessible to diverse learners; invite a wide range of approaches; and hold the potential to further challenge, strengthen, and extend everyone's mathematical reasoning. In this article, the authors present a family of Brick Pyramid problems as examples of "low threshold, high ceiling"…

This study examined the effectiveness of using primary sources to support close reading in social studies among students with disabilities in grade 7 middle school resource rooms. The setting is a middle school in a suburban school district located in Western New York. Two resource rooms of 10 students with reading or writing difficulties were…

The Learning Partners Program (LPP) is designed to promote interschool collaborative learning. Using the Framework for Great Schools as a lens, the program creates triads of schools by matching a host school with strong practices in a specific learning focus area (LFA) with two partner schools interested in strengthening their practices in that…

Co-teaching is a model of inclusive instruction that has become increasingly popular throughout schools as a way to meet the needs of students with disabilities in general education settings. Despite being the focus of significant educational research for more than two decades, traditional deficit discourses of disability persist in educational…

For years researchers have been investigating the effects of parental involvement in middle school students. In the United States today, schools lack more in parental involvement as children move up in grades. Some research findings have shown that parental involvement is effective when teachers communicate more with parents and have a focused…

In 2008, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) produced a series of papers documenting promising practices identified throughout the field of K-12 online learning. Since then, we have witnessed a tremendous acceleration of transformative policy and practice driving personalized learning in the K-12 education space. State,…

Social return on investment (SROI) offers a new strategy to measure and communicate the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and education services to children and their families. It can be a powerful tool for demonstrating the monetary value of programs and services and for communicating that value in a way that can…

The two recently-filed New York lawsuits claiming that teacher tenure laws violate children's constitutional right to a "sound basic education" are finally dragging the long-obscure Section 3020-a of the state's Education Law into the spotlight. This attention is badly overdue because for decades § 3020-a has impeded efforts to ensure a…

This dissertation explored the beliefs of five members of a nascent professional learning community for middle school science teachers over the first semester of its existence. A professional learning community is a place for colleagues to voice and hear beliefs, and is particularly conducive to fostering the development of one's own beliefs.…

Social return on investment (SROI) analysis offers a practical new approach for measuring and communicating the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and educational services to children and their families. This guide highlights the key steps in conducting SROI research, issues in data-gathering and analysis, as well…