Classrooms across the United States increasingly find immigrant science teachers paired with urban minority students, but few of these teachers are prepared for the challenges such cultural assimilation presents. This is particularly true in secondary science education. Identifying potential prospects for culturally adaptive pedagogy in science…

This article examines the impacts of summer instruction and test-based grade retention in New York City. We use a research design that exploits test score cutoffs used in assignment to these treatments. We find modest positive effects of summer instruction on English language arts (ELA) achievement for students assigned to summer instruction…

To implement Response to Intervention with intermediate-grade struggling readers, there is a need for interventions that are responsive to individual student needs, and sufficiently comprehensive to support the many dimensions of the reading process. This research examined the efficacy of such an intervention, the Interactive Strategies…

Administered a specially developed instrument, the Homework Attitude and Behavior Inventory (HABIT), to 120 teachers in two middle schools with a clear homework policy and two without. Schools with a well-defined homework policy had teachers who gave, collected, marked, and returned homework significantly more often and believed in the usefulness…

A survey of 340 7th- and 8th-grade home economics teachers and supervisors received 280 responses indicating they were highly receptive to New York State's Home and Family Curriculum and had implemented it. Receptivity was related to perception of status benefits such as competence, inservice training, increased resources, and job security. (SK)

The I-Search, an interdisciplinary, student-centered inquiry process, is an integral part of an upstate New York middle school's curriculum. Students are immersed in a motivating theme, develop their own search plans, follow and revise these plans as they gather information, and prepare papers as foundations for oral reports, skits, posters, or…

A recent action research experiment comparing individualistic and cooperative learning results in two seventh grade classrooms found that retention scores slightly favored the cooperative learning method. Questions arose concerning grade-sharing, relative difficulty of subject matter and multiple-choice questions, and student attitudes about the…

This paper evaluates the impact of the New York Networks for School Renewal Project, a whole school reform initiated by the Annenberg Foundation as part of a nationwide reform strategy. It uses data on students in randomly chosen control schools to estimate impacts on student achievement, using an intent-to-treat design. After controlling for…

Promotes the experiential learning benefits of outdoor education. Describes the experiences of students in grades 4-6 who planned, raised funds for, and participated in a field trip that included a visit to the New England Aquarium, a whale watch cruise, and camping on Cape Cod during a tropical storm. (LP)

Using ingenuity and an IBM grant, an assistant professor of special education paired 40 teacher education students in her methods courses with middle-school writing partners from the teachers' classes for moderately handicapped students. Using electronic mail, the pairs communicated often on various topics. Friendships developed, along with…

As an alternative to a pullout program, Ardsley (New York) Middle School implemented a collaborative/integrated special education program for grades five through eight. Each interdisciplinary team has a communication arts, social studies, math, and science teacher, as well as a special education teacher and a teaching assistant. Additional support…

The Future Problem Solving process engages middle school students in real-world issues by creating a multidisciplinary "think tank" environment requiring them to apply both divergent (brainstorming, creativity, flexibility) and convergent (analysis, synthesis, evaluation) strategies to political problems. The process can accurately…

The Manhattanville (New York) College Neuroscience Outreach Program is a research-based effort that presents different topics in neuroscience to science students in local middle schools. The program aims to provide a forum for curriculum development and teaching, enhance a cooperative internal community, and increase student awareness of the…