The integration of learning games into schools holds significant promise, yet faces numerous obstacles. Ubiquitous games (casual games for smart phones) attempt to motivate students to engage repeatedly with content beyond school, while enabling teachers to facilitate deeper reflection on game-related curricula during class. During a two-year…

The purpose of this study was to look at mission driven school district leadership in Massachusetts public schools and attempt to identify any relationship, or lack thereof, between district mission statements and student achievement. In this study, 288 Massachusetts public school districts are ranked according to their 2011 high school graduation…

Background: Cluster-randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

The authors evaluated emotional distress among 9th-12th grade students, and examined whether the association between being lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgendered (i.e., "LGBT") and emotional distress was mediated by perceptions of having been treated badly or discriminated against because others thought they were gay or lesbian.…

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), standardized test scores are the indicator used to hold schools and school districts accountable for student achievement. Each state is responsible for constructing an accountability system, attaching consequences--or stakes--for student performance. The theory of action implied by this…