Public charter schools lack research that determines what makes them successful. Charter schools are relatively new, existing for around 30 years in the United States. The depth and breadth of research focusing on public education rarely includes charter schools. The research focusing on charter schools specifically is quite limited. Like…

Schools today are facing unprecedented demands for school accountability and student achievement. Effective school leadership is recognized as a critical component for overall school success. Consequently, researchers have extensively explored school leadership and identifiedtransformational leadership as an appropriate style for schools…

Charter schools are public schools that operate free from some government regulations in return for a commitment to achieve a set of student outcomes specified in their charter. Nearly 8,000 public charter schools enrolled 3.7 million students in the U.S. in 2020-21. In major cities, charter schools receive less funding per pupil compared to…

Restorative justice practices are an increasingly popular approach to behavioral management, rooted in relationships rather than the behaviorist approach of many traditional forms of schooling. Research on restorative practice implementation demonstrates that schools rarely have time to consider cultural change, as they rush to reduce suspensions…

The goal in this qualitative phenomenological study was to discover the experiences of middle school teachers as they pertain to culturally responsive pedagogy, student engagement, and student growth. Participants who taught culturally diverse students in Grades 6-8 were recruited from public charter middle schools in an urban district in the…

This qualitative case study examines the experiences of three Black female science teachers who experienced and participated in the triumphs and failings of today's charter school system while teaching Black and Brown students. Using Critical Race Theory and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy as frameworks, the findings of the study revealed that the…

Misalignments in caring between home and school can often be a source of alienation for minoritized students. This study explores how African immigrant middle school students at an urban K-8 charter school experience congruencies and disconnections in caring practice between home and school. The school is academically successful and shares some…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is important for academic and social success, yet responsive SEL for Black youth remains underexamined. The current study analyzed focus groups to investigate how Black boys (N = 10) in an urban middle school think about emotion and its regulation. Results revealed that participants negotiate tension between emotion…

This qualitative case study served to investigate teachers' and students' experiences implementing BASE Education, an electronic learning (e-learning) platform for social and emotional learning (SEL), in an urban charter middle school in Paterson, New Jersey. Convenient purposeful sampling was used to recruit seven students and three…

Examining school-wide factors that can positively influence student and school success is especially crucial after the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a period of online learning that led to a decrease in student achievement scores across the nation. As a result, this study sought to assess how schedule design specifically affected teacher…

Closing the achievement gap has been a continuous topic of conversation in the United States for decades. School leaders have explored many ways to address the academic achievement of their marginalized student population. One approach has been the implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy and curriculum. By implementing a curriculum in which…

Background/Context: In thousands of classrooms throughout the United States and internationally, behavior management apps have become an integral part of schools' discipline machineries. Such apps are designed to help teachers enforce rules, especially when it comes to rewards and punishments within school token economies. To understand how these…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders often need behavioral supports to facilitate their success in the classroom. One commonly used intervention involves taking brief breaks at targeted times during the day to return to the classroom better prepared for participation. However, research is limited on what should happen while a student…

Leaders set the tone and the culture for their schools. The purpose of this phenomenology study is to examine how the increase in racial diversity among urban middle school teachers impacts the school's culture. The author utilized the Invitational Education model as a conceptual framework. The researcher conducted a total of 28 interviews with…

Eight years ago, in 2014, the Civil Rights Project issued a report that raised awareness about the dire state of segregation in New York State and, in particular, New York City schools. That report spurred substantial activism, primarily led by student groups, parents, teachers, and administrators, which has been influential in the current…