This study examined rural-nonrural differences in postsecondary educational expectations and the attainment of expectations for grade 10 students attending rural and nonrural high schools in the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest region and how these differences compare with rural-nonrural differences in the rest of the nation. For…

Racial minority youth are disproportionally removed from their learning environment due to school discipline and placed in special education for emotional disturbance. These disparities continue to trouble families, educators, and policy makers, particularly within urban schools. Yet there is a paucity of research on how behavioral outcome…

Prior research shows that rural students' education expectations and aspirations, as well as their postsecondary enrollment and persistence rates, tend to be lower than those of nonrural students. However, much of that prior research may not apply to today's students because it uses old data or focuses on individual states or purposive samples.…

These two qualitative descriptive case studies investigated supports and barriers to integrating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as an instructional methodology in language arts and social studies departments at an urban and a suburban high school in Wisconsin. Integrated Comprehensive Systems (ICS) implementation was determined through the…

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…

Purpose: Milwaukee has very high rates of risky sexual behavior and low rates of academic achievement among adolescents. Milwaukee school representatives partnered with researchers to create and implement an innovative project-based learning (PBL) high school health curriculum to engage students in school. This health education program, Project…

Background: The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's (UWM) Urban Teacher World Pre-College Academy works with American high school students to explore what it means to be an educator in the urban context. High school students from underrepresented groups reside at the UWM campus to work with university faculty, staff and students to explore careers…

This study analyzed how Wisconsin rural public high schools' academic achievement compared to their city, suburb and town peers while controlling for ten factors. The Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) measured academic achievement for tenth graders including reading, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. The ten…

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association is the governing body for high school athletics in the State of Wisconsin. For some time they have been concerned with the growing perception that there is recruitment occurring in varsity basketball within its member schools. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine what, if any,…

This paper examines evidence on the "systemic effects" of expanding school choice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee is home to one of the nation's largest and longest-running school choice programs. If there are systemic effects from expanding school choice we should be able to see them in Milwaukee. This paper also introduces a novel…

The study under review is the second-year evaluation report of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), a publicly funded voucher program that allows low-income students in Milwaukee to attend secular and religious private schools in that city. Its primary finding is that there were no overall statistically significant differences in…

This is the second year report in a five-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This program, which began in 1990, provides government-funded vouchers for low-income children to attend private schools in the City of Milwaukee. The maximum voucher amount in 2007-08 was $6,607, and approximately 20,000 children use a…

Many school systems have so much difficulty when it comes to educating students between the ages of 12 and 15. There seems to be perennial dissatisfaction with how public schools educate these "young adolescents." The grade configurations of schools varied, but the dominant pattern was eight years of primary school followed by four years…

In the last five years, a growing number of large, urban school districts have moved to close what are termed "troubled" 6-8 middle schools and have opened K-8 schools in their place: Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, and Philadelphia have been among the first to do…

This study examines the relationships between student literacy performance and discussion-based approaches to the development of understanding in 64 middle and high school English classrooms. A series of hierarchical linear models indicated that discussion-based approaches were significantly related to spring performance, controlling for fall…