Mental health challenges are on the rise among today's youth. Recent reports have noted an acute and significant need for school-based mental health education and supportive interventions for children and adolescents. Among these approaches, a growing focus has centered on improving students' mental health literacy (MHL) as a foundational…

Scholars from various disciplines have theorized a relationship between reading fiction and empathy. Research in cognitive studies suggests that understanding fiction requires Theory of Mind, or the cognitive ability to understand the feelings and motivations of others. Some studies build on this research to suggest reading fiction helps to…

The participatory action research (PAR) aimed to build educators' culturally responsive teaching capacity to support equitable classrooms. The study focused on the culturally responsive teaching development and decision-making process of a middle school principal, three Language Art teachers, and the culturally responsive teaching influence to…

Educator leadership requires continuous development, including extended professional learning opportunities for principals in the field. This is also true for district leaders who likely have even fewer robust opportunities to grow professionally. We conducted a comparative interrupted time series of publicly available student achievement data…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to provide school district leaders and policymakers information of the impact grade configuration had on academic performance using math and ELA ILEARN scores over a three-year period. The study included data from 585 schools that were classified into four groups: Elementary Setting, Intermediate Setting,…

Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit charter management organization that starts and manages public charter schools, primarily in traditionally underserved communities. As part of a 2016 grant awarded to Uncommon from the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program to support replication and expansion of its school model, we conducted a…

This article presents a preliminary study of an urban school district, and its use of a scripted middle-school language arts and literacy curriculum. The majority of students served by this district are African American. By interviewing a small sample of four teachers and one literacy coach, gathering preliminary data, and observing students…

The return to in-person schooling post-COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased pressure on educators to ensure academic success for students. This study examines the school climate of 40 elementary and middle schools in California's Central Valley and its impact on academic performance and attendance, comparing pre-pandemic (2018-2019) with…

Teaching topics on Indigenous people and culture can be challenging for educators in K-12 classrooms for a multitude of reasons. This dissertation examines the epistemological complexities that teaching Indigenous identity, cultural teachings, and futurities are met with in mainstream classrooms. In the early chapters, I spend time describing what…

The West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) Office of Federal Programs conducted a routine monitoring of Upshur County in December of 2022. This resulted in a report of findings which was completed February 10, 2023. Per Federal Program protocols, counties are provided 60 days to respond to findings; establishing Upshur County's deadline for…

Starting at the school level, language education develops comprehension and expression skills. It is important to develop literacy skills as it is the basic way of acquiring information. Native language textbooks created with a text-based approach are an integral part of this process. Accurate, qualified, and purposefully selected texts help…

The purpose of this study was to understand the implementation and impact of the New Teacher Center's (NTC) strategies for scaling its validated induction model to 301 schools in five school districts serving high proportions of students of color and students from low-income households. SRI's evaluation of the implementation and impact of NTC's i3…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among technology use, per pupil spending and school district-wide student achievement. The setting of this study was 94 school districts from New York State's Nassau and Suffolk counties, a suburban region adjacent to New York City. The results of this study showed that technology use had…

School districts choose programs based on limited data, word of mouth, or cost-effectiveness. STEM-based schools often choose project-based learning (PBL) programs to deliver curricula through limited research and word of mouth effectiveness. This study evaluated one PBL program implementation in the context of a suburban Texas middle school by…

The purpose of this study was to explore the degree of cultural responsiveness and Cultural Intelligence (CQ) throughout administrators, English Language Arts (ELA) teachers, and ELA curriculum and instruction in an increasingly demographically diverse middle school. Cultural responsiveness is not a synonym for Critical Race Theory. Critical Race…