This second of six briefs analyzing data from the U.S. Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), covering the 2020-21 school year, explores enrollment of students with disabilities by race, gender, English proficiency, and primary disability to gain a fuller picture of educational equity. It is recognized that such categories can, at times, conceal as…

Many people consider teaching a calling; the profession is predicated on helping others while yielding little personal gain. A teacher's primary goal is to deliver a valuable and engaging educational opportunity. The onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020 created challenges to reaching this goal for many teachers across the United States…

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…

Although there has been a significant increase in the number of charter schools, little is known about their science education programs from the science teachers' perspective. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic created limitations for all participants that required new untested approaches that varied depending on circumstances. The first study in this…

The purpose of this study was to better understand the extent to which a Public Charter High School and a Two-Year Community College leveraged their partnership and committed resources towards expanding access to concurrent credit career and technical education programs. The goal of this partnership was to invest in the human capital of high…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the relationship between school leaders and teachers and how these relationships impact school climate. The study also examined essential traits of effective school leaders using the lens of servant and transformative theories. The focus on research included secondary schools under the…

The rapid expansion of charter schools has fueled concerns about their impact on traditional public schools. I estimate the effect of charter openings on traditional public schools in Massachusetts and North Carolina by comparing schools near actual charter sites to those near proposed sites that were never occupied. I find charter openings…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the design and user testing of GeoForge, a multiple-player digital learning experience for middle school that leverages virtual reality (VR) and individualized websites for learning concepts in planetary science. This paper investigates how specific instructional design choices and features of the technology…

Charter high schools largely serving low-income, first-generation, Black and Hispanic students have long boasted of the comparatively high proportions of their students who graduate and go to college. But as these schools and their alumni grow older, charters also are looking at their rates of degree attainment, which remain lower than they'd…

While K-12 online education and cyber charter schools have existed for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 compelled every professor and teacher globally to participate in this mode of instruction. Four years after the pandemic, many brick-and-mortar K-12 schools have retained cyber or online classes within the curriculum to offer students more…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is the nation's largest network of public charter schools. KIPP began as a network of charter middle schools designed to serve underserved communities, with the goal of closing achievement gaps and preparing students to succeed in college. KIPP has since expanded its model to include elementary and high…

Providing opportunities for youth who have been 'pushed out' of traditional schools to re-engage is an issue of social justice. The lack of equitable learning opportunities in the traditional science classroom is a contributing factor to youth being pushed out. Alternative education programs have the potential to support youth who have been…

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…

This was a mixed method, Action Research study addressing the foundational research question: What can Education Forward Academy (EFA) (pseudonym) do to improve equity in the College Credit Plus (CCP) Program (also known as Dual Enrollment or Dual Credit)? To answer this question, both quantitative and qualitative sub-questions were explored. The…

There is broad consensus that strong educator-student relationships are important in improving outcomes for children coping with trauma and toxic levels of stress, and emerging evidence that positive relationships can help buffer against the compassion fatigue and burnout that is associated with working in high-needs schools. Through a case study…