Research from the past 40 years indicates that Black students in primary and secondary school settings are subjected to exclusionary discipline, including suspension and expulsion, at rates two to three times higher than their White peers (Children's Defense Fund, 1975; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002). Although this phenomenon has…

Using an iterative design along with multiple methodological approaches and a large representative sample, this study presents reliability, validity, and fairness evidence for two surveys measuring student attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and math (S-STEM) and interest in STEM careers for (a) 4th- through 5th-grade students…

This study investigated the effect of systematic early numeracy skill instruction on grade-aligned 4th and 5th grade Common Core math skill acquisition for three 4th and 5th grade students with a significant intellectual disability. Students were taught early numeracy skills (e.g., number identification, making sets to five items, simple addition)…

The purpose of this comparative case study was to explore the ways educators at the school level experience the Common Core Standards and examine the contextual factors that impacted the way it was initially implemented. Qualitative data were gathered through teacher surveys, faculty focus groups, and interviews with each school principal and the…

"INSPIRE" is an Investing in Innovation (i3) development grant funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. "INSPIRE" provides an innovative integrated K-12 STEM pipeline approach focused on STEM course content and instructional redesign. The INSPIRE model was implemented in Cabarrus County…

Business leaders in North Carolina cannot find the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent they need to stay competitive. Students' lagging performance in K-12 is a critical reason why. The good news is that the nation's most effective STEM education programs can help turn the tide. North Carolina students have made some…

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Schools, educators have leapt into the Common Core with both feet, creating an internal website for teachers to share performance tasks and implementing systemwide, school-based professional learning that has put the standards into practice and tested students on them in the 2012-13 school year. The district began…

Proud Readers Own What's Learned (PROWL) was developed out of the need to find an engaging, creative process for readers to express what they have read and, frankly, to let teachers see that the students actually read the books. In other more prescriptive reading programs students can go through the motions and actually pass tests without having…

"Fast Track" is a comprehensive intervention designed to reduce conduct problems and promote academic, behavioral, and social improvement. The program's components include the "Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies" curriculum, parent groups, parent-child sharing time, child social skills training, home visiting, child…

This study examines the effects of four types of reading comprehension questions--immediate, non-immediate, summary, and unanswerable questions--that linguistically diverse and predominantly low-income parents asked their fourth graders on children's text retellings. One-hundred-twenty (N = 120) parent and child dyads participated in a home visit…

This study examined how U.S., Finnish, and Irish educators identified and supported struggling readers. Using Johnston's (2011) framework for evaluating reading interventions and activity theory (Engeström, 1999), we interviewed educators in four U.S., three Irish, and three Finnish schools. In the United States, the adoption of three…

This report, the third of three reports examining Supplemental Education Services (SES) within the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), focused on the long-term goal of improved student achievement by the end of the school year. In 2009-10, 508 students participated in SES at the five schools offering SES: Brentwood, Fox Road, Poe, Wendell,…

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title 1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the first year of NCLB on teacher effort in the…

In August 2010, the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) received a grant of more than $25 million from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program for a five-year study to validate its Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) model in three very diverse regions of the United States: rural North…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which diverse RTI schools in North Carolina engage in culturally responsive beliefs and practices. A total of eight diverse elementary schools participated in this study. Within these schools, 200 general and special education teachers in grades k-5 completed surveys. Areas surveyed included…