Background: Schools are often held responsible for preventing or addressing cyberbullying, yet little is known about school administrator perceptions of cyberbullying and the challenges they face in addressing this public health issue. Aims: The goal of this study is to examine school administrators' perceptions of the facilitators of…

The purpose of this quantitative one-group pretest-posttest design study was to test the effectiveness of professional development for integrating technology in the curriculum of an urban Iowa middle school. Iowa middle school teachers are expected to integrate technology, to comply with Iowa Core Curriculum standards, by 2014. The participants…

With over 14,000 schools implementing Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS), it is important to consider factors that contribute to effective implementation--which may affect student outcomes. Social validity is one factor that may influence implementation. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which…

Although results showing coaching effectiveness are accumulating, coaching is often included with other forms of Professional Development (PD) support including teacher in-service (Powell, Diamond, Burchinal, & Koehler, 2010; Kretlow et al., 2011), access to an annotated video library (Allen et al., 2011), and access to ongoing learning…

In school districts across the nation, diverse student groups, including English Learners and students with disabilities, have been experiencing significant gains in reading performance after using READ 180. This compendium of READ 180 research contains results of 40 studies conducted in a variety of settings, in school districts across the…

Hundreds of middle level and high schools are trying new strategies to improve attendance as an important path to improving achievement; graduation rates; and in many states, funding. Celebrity wake-up calls are just one of the tactics that school administrators are turning to as they look to leverage their own mix of sizzle and substance to…

This longitudinal study investigates whether rural adolescents who transition to a new school in sixth grade have higher levels of risky behavior than adolescents who transition in seventh grade. Our findings indicate that later school transitions had little effect on problem behavior between sixth and ninth grades. Cross-sectional analyses found…

Case studies of Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) in the Iowa project included four high schools that have been practicing this professional development model for the last five years. The schools, AHST Secondary School, Cedar Falls High School, Spencer High and Middle Schools and Valley High School were visited in April, 2011. The visits included…

This study was prompted by previous research showing a decline in motivation as students transition from elementary to middle school. The decline in motivation may be associated with changes in the achievement goal structures of their classrooms and schools. This study describes a survey of 69 elementary and 28 middle school teachers that explored…

News coverage is important to every policy area. While some people have personal knowledge of certain topics, many rely on mass media for direct, up-to-date, and in-depth reporting. This is especially the case with education because only a third of American adults currently have a child in elementary or secondary school. What most people know…

Examined learning in science concepts, process, application, creativity, attitude, and world view of students participating in the Iowa-Scope, Sequence, and Coordination (SS&C) project, part of the national reform effort using the Science-Technology-Society approach and Constructivist teaching practices. Found significant differences in…

This report describes a program designed to increase students' knowledge in the science content area utilizing reading comprehension strategies. The targeted population consisted of grade 6 middle school students in a growing urban community in eastern Iowa. The students demonstrated poor comprehension of their science textbook. Data also revealed…

Designed to expose young readers to a wide variety of literary genres, this annotated bibliography provides a list of over 500 recently published adolescent literature selections representative of the universal themes in literature. Selections are divided into sections of folklore, drama, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction (the most extensive). The…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) House Subcommittee Passes Education Funding Bill: Overall Education Spending Essentially Flat, Striving Readers…