The passage to middle school has been identified as a confusing period for adolescents, involving a series of major transitions. A new variable that permeates these already lofty transitions is the firm entrenchment of Generation Alpha in the middle grades classroom, a cohort that includes anyone born from 2010 onward, making them the first…

Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

An often-overlooked component of a middle school website is the necessity for that website to be accessible to those with disabilities, while following the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act. In support of the belief that support the belief that inclusive education and…

Utilizing longitudinal data from the national Schools to Watch (STW) program, this paper examines school demographic characteristics and teacher ratings of the implementation of STW criteria in STW schools and schools that have applied but have not yet been designated as a STW. The STW program was established by the National Forum to Accelerate…

This descriptive study sought to determine the attitudes of middle school teachers in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio toward the current implementation of key components of the middle school concept within their schools. Researchers were asked to assess the relationship of state accountability programs to the implementation levels of such components.…

We expect that word knowledge accumulates gradually. This article draws on earlier approaches to assessing depth, but focuses on one dimension: richness of semantic knowledge. We present results from a study in which three distinct item types were developed at three levels of depth: knowledge of common usage patterns, knowledge of broad topical…

This report provides a new resource for understanding the state of urban public schools in the U.S. Geared specifically toward city leaders who want to evaluate how well traditional district and charter schools are serving all their city's children and how their schools compare to those in other cities, the report measures outcomes for all public…

This study contributes knowledge about how a digital badge system integrated into an online, subject-matter-specific, and competency-based professional development (PD) program affected teachers' experiences with and perceptions of the program activities. The report presents findings from a one-year exploratory study of an online PD program, and…

This descriptive study investigated the attitudes of middle school building principals toward the desirability of preservice teacher preparation programs conducted wholly or almost wholly online. This project included middle schools in the states of Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio where random cluster sampling was utilized to select participants from…