Few studies holistically examine how students experience the multiple dimensions of school climate and resilience promoting characteristics, or how these two constructs may be interrelated. This study utilised a sample of 78,550 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students in California. Roughly half of the participants were female (52%), and roughly half…

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…

Background: The experiences of youth with intersecting LGBTQ+ and Asian American (AA) identities have been largely unexplored. This study explored these experiences of LGBTQ+ AA California youth with mental health, school climate, and school victimization. Methods: Drawing from the 2016-2017 California Healthy Kids Survey (N = 326,124), this study…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused schools to shift to virtual or hybrid instruction, thrusting young adolescents into a very different educational environment. Stage-environment fit theory outlines ways in which educational contexts may, or may not, meet the developmental needs of young adolescents. Yet little is known about how virtual environments…

A growing number of educators concur that, in order to improve student academic performance, schools need to focus not only on students' academic needs but also on their social, emotional, and material needs (Piscatelli & Lee, 2011). As a result, school climate--the social, emotional, and physical characteristics of a school community (Cohen,…

Educators, researchers, and policy makers concerned about college under-enrollment among underserved groups of students have traditionally focused reform efforts at the high school level. Over the last several decades, however, there has been a growing interest in improving college readiness beginning at the elementary level. Recently, the…

Because many school districts receive funding based on student attendance, absenteeism results in a high cost for the public education system. This study shows the direct links between bias-based bullying, school absenteeism because of feeling unsafe at school, and loss of funds for school districts in California. Data from the 2011-2013…

Student reports are a common approach to characterizing how students experience their classrooms. We used a recently developed method--multilevel confirmatory factor analysis--to determine whether commonly employed measures of achievement goal structure constructs (mastery and performance) typically verified at the student level can be verified at…

This study explored the ways in which our classroom community (students and teacher) engaged with humanizing pedagogy in a seventh grade science classroom, toward the full development of our classroom community, and the dismantling of inequitable practices and unjust policies that we recognized in our science classroom, school and/or community…

Research has found that when compared with civilian students, military-connected students in the United States have more negative mental health outcomes, stemming from the stress of military life events (i.e., deployment). To date, studies on military-connected youth have not examined the role of protective factors within the school environment,…

Given the importance of student engagement for healthy outcomes, research needs to investigate whether school-based assets promote student engagement beyond individual and family influences. Unfortunately, such research has been limited by a lack of valid instrumentation. After examining the psychometrics of the California Healthy Kids Survey…

A middle school student and teacher watershed education project supports a large wetland restoration effort. It provides community-based, science education for urban, low-income, multicultural 6th-9th grade students and their teachers. This is a bottom-up approach to extending information to the local community about the restoration. The project…

The need for U.S. teachers to better understand School Violence Prevention is growing. Evidence suggests however, that 10 years and 10 billion dollars after the Columbine High School massacre, our public schools are not safer (www.community-matters.org). There has been an "after the fact" approach to the problem of school violence. After…

This paper reports the results of a descriptive study on the use of a technology-enhanced formative assessment system called Accelerated Math (AM) for ELLs and their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. It was comprised of analyses of an extant database of 18,549 students, including 2,057 ELLs, from grades 1 through 8 across 30 U.S. states. These…

Educators are increasingly pressured to raise standardized test scores. Test-focused school leaders, however, may neglect school climate factors associated with positive student development and increased student achievement. The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) and its Resilience Youth Development Module (RYDM) represent a research-based,…