Each and every student, including students with disabilities, needs to be engaged in high-quality science instruction that moves beyond just memorization and recall of facts and toward critical thinking that supports informed decision making about current issues. There are notable achievement gaps between the science proficiency of students with…

School leaders must make decisions and implement strategies to improve a school climate and student achievement, and it benefits them to understand which areas of school climate have the greatest impact on student achievement. The State of Georgia measures school climate and student achievement with its school accountability measure, the College…

The school-to-prison pipeline has been an ongoing phenomenon for many decades that disproportionately and negatively impacts students of color. Due to research suggesting school principals play a critical role in the student disciplinary decision-making process, the present study aimed to better understand how principals make discipline decisions…

At City Academies Neighborhood Middle School, there is a gap in student achievement. Over the course of two years, our lowest performing students did not grow at the rate of their peers. This problem has several consequences, including over classification of students with disabilities and a widening achievement gap. The purpose of my research was…

The purpose of this quantitative ex post facto study was to determine if, and to what extent, differences existed in pre-and-post math scores following the VMath intervention for Title I 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in the Southwestern United States. Three research questions guided this study: (1) is there a statistically significant difference in…

Despite national attention for academic success, data shows that students with disabilities in the Appoquinimink School District do not share in this success. The district boasts a large enrollment in AP courses and high scores in both the state standardized tests and AP exams. However, students with disabilities consistently perform well below…

We examine effects of the pandemic on student attendance, course grades, and grade retention in North Carolina in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 using descriptive and regression analyses. We find each outcome worsened on average in 2020-2021, with larger changes at the high end of the absence distribution, the low end of the grade distribution, and among…

Educational achievement disparities continue to affect subgroups based on socioeconomic status, gender, race, and ethnicity. Despite efforts to close the achievement gap, the Black-White performance gap in reading, mathematics, and science scores remains virtually unchanged. The problem is that science educators in the United States receive…

Career Technical Education (CTE) policies and programs have increasingly focused on supporting the needs of historically marginalized learners and closing access and performance gaps among learner groups. Perkins V, the latest iteration of federal CTE legislation known as the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, is part of this…

The learning gap between intermediate students on grade level and those below grade level continues to grow. Intermediate students with below-grade-level reading comprehension skills struggle with informational texts and across-content material. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore parent and teacher perceptions of…

This doctoral dissertation investigates the effects of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy on educational equity in New Jersey, focusing on three primary research questions. Firstly, the study examines whether the implementation of NCLB mandates led to the closure of achievement gaps between black and white students, as evidenced by disparities…

A growing number of studies have shown the benefits of K-12 integrated science and engineering education. With this study, we add to the literature by documenting the relationship between STEM learning and engagement, and the demographic characteristics that impact achievement in STEM. This longitudinal study followed a diverse group of 245 middle…

We use data from the Stanford Education Data Archive to describe district-level trends in average academic achievement between 2009 and 2019. Though on average school districts' test scores improved very modestly (by about 0.001 SDs/year), there is significant variation among districts. Moreover, we find that average test score disparities between…

Using the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) datasets for geography, we explore relationships between geography achievement in the eighth grade and contextual variables related to the content and organization of the geography/social studies curriculum. Differences in student achievement are associated with grade-level…

The problem of practice being explored in this work was first identified at a suburban middle school in Massachusetts, where the assessment scores of students with learning disabilities were significantly lower than those of peers not on Individualized Education Plans. The collaboration between general education science teachers and special…