This mixed-methods case study examines the emergency financial management legislation enacted in Michigan from 2009 to 2018 as an education policy for governance reform in three local school districts: Detroit, Highland Park, and Muskegon Heights. From its inception, the emergency financial manager law was an intervention strategy for local…

This demonstration brief provides teaching and learning stories from districts and schools implementing PBIS with an integrated systems focus and is organized across the following areas: (a) the context of the school/district, (b) the changes made in the systems, (c) the impact of the changes made in the systems, and (d) next steps to improve the…

Init2Winit, a gamified mobile application designed to increase students' alignment knowledge between college, career, and salary expectations has been beta-tested in midwestern urban and rural U.S. high schools (age 14-18). Students earn different points in the game when their educational expectations and expected annual income are matched with…

We report on an effectiveness evaluation of the Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES) program. YES applies empowerment theory to an after-school program for middle school students. YES is an active learning curriculum designed to help youth gain confidence in themselves, think critically about their community, and work with adults to create positive…

This paper analyzes the outcomes of an innovative technology experience for students and teachers (ITEST) project, Mayor's Youth Technology Corps (MYTCs) in Detroit, MI, which was funded by the NSF ITEST program. The MYTC project offered an integration of two technologies, geographic information system (GIS) and information assurance (IA), to…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

In July 2008, Riverbend Public Schools (RPS) in Western Michigan and Grand Valley State University (GVSU) received a grant from the Wallace Foundation that supported the development of a specialized educational leadership program. The project was designed to customize an existing degree program in the university's College of Education, focusing on…

Today's children spend less and less time in the outdoors, leading Richard Louv in 2008 to coin the term "nature deficit disorder." Louv pointed out that experiences with nature are essential to a child's physical and emotional development and that the lack of these types of experiences has led to an increase in child obesity, attention…

The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent a teacher education program prepares teacher candidates to be effective urban educators who are reflective, innovative, and committed to diversity based on the perceptions and insight from students. As the nation grapples with an extreme range of outputs from our public schools, an…

The Detroit Healthy Youth Initiative is a 10-year partnership between the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) and Wayne State University (WSU) with the goal of improving the quality of school health and physical education programs throughout the city schools. Drawing on the experiences of WSU and DPS faculty, administrators, teachers, and project staff,…

In 1996 President Clinton established the America Reads Challenge Act (1997), which included a commitment that every child will read independently and well by the end of third grade. This initiative was predicated on links between achievement and poverty (Riley, 1996, 2002) and that children reading below grade level in the early grades perform…

The Kalamazoo Promise was announced in the fall of 2005, offering free college tuition at any public state college or university for graduates of the district who have gained acceptance to a postsecondary institution. This program was funded through the generous support of anonymous donors, and a federally-funded evaluation is underway to examine…

The purpose of this evaluation of Scholastic's "System 44" conducted by RMC Research was to expand the existing research on students with learning disabilities by conducting a randomized study of struggling readers with approximately half of the sample comprised of students with learning disabilities. Specifically, this evaluation…

Charter school administrators weathered start-up woes, among them challenging students with unmet needs, verbal assaults, dwindling student enrollment, and a first-year budget deficit exceeding $200,000 to implement a reading improvement strategy that holds promise for helping at-risk students read better, a point particularly underscored…

This study focuses on the effectiveness of the alternative elementary teacher certification program at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. The program was developed in response to the projected teacher shortage, the need for teachers in subjects such as mathematics and science, the need for teachers in urban schools, and the need for…