This brief describes an evaluation of academic intervention supports available to high school students in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) during the 2012-2013 school year. A website review identified information about academic supports available to students or parents within each high school's web pages. A survey of school staff gathered…

Background/Context: One of several challenges to fusing reading and science instruction through the use of reflective practice arises from recent claims that it is questionable whether anyone can "make" preservice teachers into reflective practitioners. This challenge has implications for researchers and teacher educators in general, especially if…

The purpose of this manuscript is twofold: First, the authors explore the nature of the learning in which their students engaged during a service-learning experience in efforts to understand the meanings of teaching and learning they constructed, and how the context of this experience interacted with their candidates' previously constructed…

In this paper, we used the "Moral Judgment Test" (MJT), an instrument that was developed by German psychologist, Georg Lind in 1976, along with some additional items, administered after the standard MJT. The participants were 724 Chinese adolescents whose ages ranged from 14 to 27 years of age. The results show that there was considerable…

This study examines the use of instructional coaching in one urban school as a form of professional development for teachers. The use of instructional coaches in the classroom has become more and more popular in many school districts across the nation as they look for ways to improve student performance by improving the performance of their…

Mentoring is often considered a gift of time and resources that a mentor gives to a mentee. However, research suggests that mentoring has benefits specifically for the mentor. This study analyzes written reflections of twenty-five mentors who took part in a National Science Foundation-funded program that encouraged middle-school girls to engage in…

Every step in a student's life is important for future success. Schools are building stronger frameworks of curricula, instruction and assessments to prepare students to move from one learning environment to another with maximum results as they journey toward adulthood. This issue of "High Schools That Work" contains examples of…

The overarching goal of the "Supporting Best Practices in Student Success Project" is to create, enhance, or expand successful programs that are replicable and can be scaled to greatly improve the percentage of underserved students who complete postsecondary education. In doing so, National College Access Network (NCAN) aimed to build…

Middle school teachers' use of digital curricula incorporating dynamic technology has been found to support student learning of complex algebraic concepts. This article reports on pilot research involving collaboration among faculty from a public university's college of education, educational researchers from a nonprofit research organization, and…

Educational and political leaders have expressed concern about racial and ethnic disparities in students' readiness for postsecondary study and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A lack of preparedness of STEM teachers in high-need urban districts, which serve predominantly low-income minority students, is often…

In 2004, an upper Midwestern school district received a grant to administer content-specific professional development to teachers of American history. A series of nine master's level, degree-eligible courses were developed and administered by the local university's history department. At the conclusion of the grant activities in spring of 2008,…

This paper reviews factors that contribute to the development of middle school students' interest in statistical literacy and its motivational influence on learning. To date very little research has specifically examined the influence of positive affect such as interest on learning in the middle-school statistics context. Two bodies of associated…

This project investigated the effects of technology task autonomy, teacher gender, and student gender on student achievement scores for students disaggregated by IEP and SES in middle school science classrooms. Participants were from the treatment group in a larger quasi-experimental design project that investigated the effects of integrated…

This study examines how two history teacher candidates, Monica and James, learned to teach historical thinking and reading in a discipline-specific teacher education program. Data include pretests and postests, interviews, observations, and university course assignments. Qualitative data analysis reveals that although both teachers excelled in the…

Teachers in rural areas are finding that more and more special needs children are being included in their K-12 classrooms to comply with the mandate for a free and appropriate public education even in isolated small school systems. For students with mild intellectual disabilities (MID) this placement is meant to accomplish both the academic and…