The primary mission of the Call Me MiSTER (CMM) program, founded in 2000 and headquartered at Clemson University, was originally developed in collaboration with three private historically Black institutions to address the significant shortage of African American men teaching in K-8 public elementary school classrooms. In this article, we describe…

Background: Teachers who engage in formative classroom assessment using practices that accurately measure student learning should be better positioned to diagnose the instructional needs of their students and to act on that information. For this reason, there has been increased interest in formative classroom assessment in recent years. Although…

There is an overrepresentation of African American males at an increased risk for facing punitive actions that eliminate them from a school's instructional environment (Darensbourg, Perez, & Blake, 2010). Out-of-school suspension should allow students to reflect upon their actions; however, in some instances the suspension causes students to…

This paper explored whether or not In School Suspensions (ISS) is effective in reducing student behavioral problems. Research was conducted with 6-8th grade students in a rural middle school in the upstate of South Carolina for the purposes of determining if ISS, in its current design a viable and effective method to reduce negative student…

This case study explores the perceptions of teachers, administrators, students, and parents regarding the impact of character education on in-school suspension programs. The study utilized qualitative data including personal interviews and surveys conducted at two rural middle schools in Georgia and South Carolina over a period of several…

Our nation's schools are faced with numerous critical challenges and problems; meeting federal and state mandates, state standards, elevating academic achievement, increasing parental involvement, and violence in the schools (Gould, 2011; Kowalski & Cangemi, 2011; Simpson, LaCava, & Graner, 2004). Violence in many U.S. schools continues to…

Recent research on teacher professional development (PD) underscores the importance of the coherence of PD with standards, curriculum, and assessment. Teachers' judgments of the coherence of PD with larger system goals influence their decisions about what ideas and resources they appropriate from PD. Little research, however, has examined how…

A review of two recent federal court cases concerning school principals who experienced adverse job actions after they engaged in speech about fiscal misconduct by other employees indicates that the courts found that the principal's speech was made as part of his or her job duties and was not protected by the First Amendment.

Learning "how to be a Haut Gap student" is one of the basics at Charleston's Haut Gap Middle School. Along with reading, science, and mathematics classes, every student at Haut Gap Middle School takes a course in how to be a Haut Gap student. For most students, the class is 40 minutes a day for nine weeks. But it can last 18 weeks for…

The purpose of this study was to measure decision-making influences within RtI teams. The study examined the factors that influence school personnel involved in three areas of RtI: determining which RtI measures and tools teams select and implement (i.e. Measures and Tools), evaluating the data-driven decisions that are made based on the…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to examine the perceived obstacles that contribute to the achievement gap between White and Black middle school mathematics students and the instructional strategies that help combat these obstacles of middle school mathematics teachers. The study investigated how middle-school educators…

Plagiarism is a commonly cited problem in higher education, especially in scientific writing and assignments for science courses. Students may not intentionally plagiarize, but may instead be confused about what proper source attribution entails. Much of this confusion likely stems from high school, either from lack of or inconsistent instruction…

Research on recreational media use among youth indicates young people of color who spend more time with media may also be at higher risk for school disengagement and low personal contentment compared to their white peers. This puts these students in a position to be even more influenced by the themes and messages that abound in pop culture,…

The education field must go beyond calling attention to an adolescent literacy crisis and the need for additional resources--a critical need--to treating adolescent literacy as the foundation for more ambitious efforts to improve middle and high schools in their entirety (Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Jacob, 2008). Instruction around adolescent…

This quantitative study of South Carolina middle school principals investigated how these principals use data in decision making. The P3DMI developed by Childress (2009) was incorporated into the survey to evaluate the role data plays in four areas of leadership for these principals: 1) school vision, 2) school instruction, 3) school organization,…