The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "College Readiness and Success." Contents include: (1) Texas School Counselors…

This study investigates the impact of various types of absenteeism--excused, unexcused, and suspensions--on 2024 English I and II EOC scores among 9th and 10th graders at a suburban North Texas high school. This quantitative analysis aimed to understand whether different absence types influence academic achievement when controlling for ethnicity…

The expansion and increasing popularity of Advanced Placement (AP) programs have led to a new and significant trend: students are taking AP courses earlier in their high school journey, with a notable increase in enrollment among freshmen and sophomores. This study examines the effects of early engagement in AP courses for students deemed…

The Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum has been implemented in numerous school districts to cultivate positive behaviors and diminish inappropriate conduct and behavioral issues. Beyond enhancing students' interpersonal relationships, essential skills such as relationship-building, responsible decision-making, and empathy enable…

Educational inequality due to family socioeconomic status (SES) has been the focus of both public dialogue and education research in the United States for many years. The current study aims to understand how educational inequality due to family SES has changed in the United States. Specifically, the study focuses on the changes in achievement gaps…

The role of the principal in high-needs schools is vital to the success of the organization. Middle school principals play a critical role in fostering a safe learning environment as middle schoolers navigate socioemotional development alongside academic demands. High-need schools are defined as those presenting a context that challenges the…

This project creates the first educational pipeline for the state of Texas. It incorporates middle school as a key transition point, differentiates between advanced degree achievement among Latinas/os and Chicanas/os, and fashions a secondary pipeline with a narrower age range. Findings indicate that the move from eighth grade to ninth is a…

This article examines contextual factors that impact inclusive education in the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, United States. Based on the analysis of teachers' narratives, the study concluded that teachers perceive inclusive special education as a student's right primarily grounded in the social justice context of education. While…

The state of Texas has been cited through the U.S. Department of Education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as failing to identify students under the Child Find component of the law using Response to Intervention/Multi-Tiered System of Support (RtI/MTSS). The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to identify…

This study tracked college and workforce outcomes for students who began 8th grade in fall 1998 and attended a Texas public school. Students were tracked for 17 years, through summer 2015, when they were approximately 30 years old. Of the 38,322 eighth-grade students in Harris County, 30 percent finished a postsecondary certificate or degree.…

Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong evidence of efficacy. In fact, little is known about the…

Background/Context: Students designated as English Learners (ELs) account for 10.4 percent of all students nationwide but have historically been provided unequal access to educational resources (Gándara et al., 2003; National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). Further, education policies are often blind to ELs' strengths and challenges,…

This study examines the educational outcomes of Latino men in Texas by conducting a descriptive policy-focused disaggregate analysis of longitudinal data from the 8th Grade Cohort Longitudinal Study and the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS). Based on our analysis, we provide context and understanding of the progress made towards meeting…

Research findings suggest that instructional technology coaching may be a critical lever in closing the gap in the usage of technology, sometimes referred to as the digital use divide. In the 2017-2018 school year, we provided 50 schools in 20 school districts across five states, with a grant to support an onsite, full-time instructional…

Using data is foundational to school leadership; however, when "data" are narrowly construed as academic outcomes, important data perceived as tangential to academics can be backgrounded, ignored, or unused. Today's school leaders must also attend to data around chronic absenteeism, discipline, learning climate, and social, emotional,…