Public schools have experienced an endless cycle of reform aiming to improve student achievement. Despite the time, funding, and resources that have been expended, most school reforms have not been successful at manifesting and sustaining meaningful change. New Jersey's latest attempt at school reform involved Regional Achievement Centers (RACs)…

School policies and interventions are implemented with the hope of increasing achievement, but that alone has not been found to support all students in accessing their potential (Savitz-Romer & Bouffard, 2013). The disparities that exist within the education systems provide unfair advantage to some students over others and this is seen across…

When students struggle with reading at the elementary level, their needs are typically met with interventions that focus on word recognition and decoding skills. This same intervention approach is often used to address students who struggle with reading at the middle-school level. The middle school struggling reader accumulates deficits from…

Critical thinkers and proficient readers use a composite of similar cognitive skills that are challenging to assess and difficult to cultivate. Therefore, students and teachers require an instructional model that demonstrates the acuity involved in these proficiencies. This quasiexperimental study aimed to investigate the impact of Equalities as…

Informed by the Social-Emotional and Character Development (SECD) approach to school turnaround, the present study examined the relationship between students' recollection and reflection of their experience in a SECD program and academic achievement and explored the mediating effect of student-teacher relationships. Based on an intervention in an…

Roaring Falls Unified School District (a pseudonym), an urban New Jersey district near NYC, was challenged by K-8 Multilingual Language Learners (MLLs) who lagged significantly behind general education students in English Language Arts (ELA). The District had roughly 12,000 students, of whom 93.0% were Hispanic, 26.2% were MLLs, and 32.0% were…

There has been increasing discussion about the importance of building students' social-emotional competencies for their academic and behavioral success (Jones, Brush, Bailey, Brion-Meisels, McIntyre, Kahn, Nelson, & Stickle, 2017). However, the majority of these discussions focus on social-emotional skills (SEL) as a universal intervention,…

Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of school-based depression prevention programs in reducing depressive symptoms and improving functioning. This study examined whether these programs have positive effects on school-related outcomes. Students at 10 middle and high schools in New Jersey were randomized to weekly sessions of…

The purpose of this case study was to determine the perceptions of students, faculty, and parents about the JostensRenaissance Program® (JRP) on overall school climate in a New Jersey middle school. The population for this research consisted of fifth through eighth grade students who participated in the JRP during the 2011-2012 school year, as…

This study was aimed at exploring the relationship between school culture and teachers' work environment and further exploring the roles of school culture, teachers' efficacy, beliefs, and behaviors for character education, and teachers' work environment in the relationship between a character education intervention and students' social emotional…

Previous research indicates the importance of student discourse in the construction of knowledge and the fostering of critical thinking skills, especially in the field of problem-based learning (PBL). Further, a growing body of research on game-based learning (GBL) draws parallels between playing certain types of games and the solving of…

Students across the nation are encountering more and more difficulties in their transition to high school. Not only are a significant number of students dropping out, but those who stay are also leaving high school without the skills they need to become productive citizens. Several intervention strategies are recommended to help students make a…

The Afterschool Alliance, in partnership with MetLife Foundation, is proud to present the fourth in a series of four issue briefs examining critical issues facing middle school youth and the vital role afterschool programs play in addressing these issues. This brief focuses on literacy education. While literacy's definition continues to expand to…

Schoolwide support for higher achievement is essential. Students need a nurturing environment where they feel secure about learning, where the goal is success for every student and where students are confident they will receive mentoring and encouragement to prepare for their futures. Many schools are reinventing themselves to motivate students to…

The struggles of students in the United States to comprehend non-fiction science text are well documented. Middle school students, in particular, have minimal instruction in comprehending nonfiction and flounder on assessments. This article describes the development process of the Readorium software, an interactive web-based program being…