The population of United States Latino students is growing at a rapid rate but their academic achievement lags behind white and Asian students. This issue has significant consequences for the nation's economy, as the job market continues to demand more education and better skills. Early College High School programs have the potential to improve…

Learning standards across the United States have increasingly called for history students to engage in aspects of "historical thinking," a term used to describe the complex disciplinary processes that historians use to make sense of the past. Although students are expected to learn these complex processes, little is known about how to…

This classroom-based qualitative study sought to investigate students' writing in response to culturally relevant literature. Eleven students enrolled in two grade twelve, special education classrooms in a large, urban high school participated in the study. The students included Dive female, six male, three Hispanic and eight African American; all…

The study examined the self-reported understandings of selected 3rd to 12th grade teachers had of assessment and the assessment practices they reported implementing in their classrooms along with evidence extracted from written lesson plans. The literature on classroom assessment supports the idea that teachers who create meaningful assessments,…

Recent research reveals consistent lags in American students' science achievement scores. Not only are the scores lower in the United States compared to other developed nations, but even within the United States, too many students are well below science proficiency scores for their grade levels. The current research addresses this problem by…

The purpose of this study was to investigate twelfth grade writing instruction at one high school in the Northeastern Kentucky Appalachian region. At the time of the study, Kentucky schools were in a pivotal transitional period as they were adopting the Common Core State Standards while also removing the mandatory portfolio-based writing…

On the writing component of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, 12th grade high school students' scores on argumentative tasks were lower than on tasks that required them to explain or to convey an experience ("National Assessment of Educational Progress," 2011). Similarly, 11th and 12th graders at the research…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have become one of the most talked about ideas in education today. Many K-12 schools are working to become PLCs in the hope that student learning will improve when adults commit themselves to talking collaboratively about teaching and learning and then take action that will improve student learning and…

This study used a general two-level model to explore data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988-1992 to determine the extent to which student-level (parental involvement) and school-level (school culture of college preparedness) factors individually and collectively influenced eighth grade students' eventual academic…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between virtual school size and student achievement in virtual schools in a southwestern state. Enrollment size and the following areas were studied in an attempt to determine student achievement: STAAR English Language Arts/Reading, STAAR Math, STAAR Science, and STAAR Social Studies…

In the past, negative effects of not graduating high school have included a higher likelihood of unemployment, a greater chance of living below the poverty line, and relying on government supported programs. Health problems and criminal activities are also linked to the incompletion of high school. One domain of the high school curriculum, Career…

The participants were grade 9-12 students (n = 75) from one suburban high school who were part of the Future Problem Solving Program (FPSPI). The research involved both quasi-experimental and correlational components. First, an ANCOVA was used to compare the mean scores of the Qualifying Problem (QP) for both the treatment and comparison groups…

The purpose of this study was to identify the principal behaviors that would define an instructional leader as being a data-driven school administrator and to assess current school administrators' levels of being data-driven. This research attempted to examine the relationship between the degree to which a principal was data-driven and the…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of poverty on the achievement of African American male high school students attending the same large Midwest urban school district. Cumulative grade point average (GPA) at the tenth grade level were compared to the level of poverty provided through census data of African American male tenth…

This study, which was conducted with a mixed methods approach, identified specific teacher behaviors that enhance student engagement as perceived by the students. Students were asked to rate the behaviors they found as boosting their engagement in class as exhibited by their best teacher in the school (Best Teacher Overall), and their best…