The practice of temporarily removing students from school as a form of punishment (i.e., suspensions) remains quite common. This study uses longitudinal data from a large, urban school district in California to assess whether the use of suspensions improves school safety in the following school year. Additional analyses by student race and…

Teacher-student interactions are at the core of formal learning experiences. Since these interactions can be affected by ways in which the teacher or student perceive themselves to be similar, we investigated the effects of racial/ethnic and gender similarities on the type and frequency of disciplinary incidents adolescents were involved in at one…

This study examined bullying and cyberbullying among 185 middle school students in 4 urban middle schools in Ohio. Nearly 60% of the sample was female, and 67% of the sample was not Caucasian. The results indicated that bullying and cyberbullying are prevalent in this population. Approximately 44% of 6th-grade students felt terrible about…

Background: Asthma can interfere with school attendance and engagement. School health programs are central to asthma management. Case identification is limited by reliance on parent-completed forms, which are often missing. This project tested a low-burden screening algorithm to stratify students based on priority for nurse outreach at 2 large,…

Across the nation, uncertified teachers represent a very small percentage of the teaching workforce in public elementary and secondary schools. However, research has shown that student access to certified teachers varies across districts within states, across schools within districts, or across classrooms within schools and that teachers who are…

Background: Sexting has emerged as a common socio-cultural problem in our society today. Few studies have estimated the prevalence of sexting among younger middle school youth and even fewer have assessed the relationship between sexting and mental health outcomes like anxiety and depression symptoms among middle school youth. Objectives: To…

Central to argument are evidence-based claims, requiring coordination of a claim with evidence bearing on it. We advocate a dialogic approach to developing argument skills and in the work reported here examine the further scaffold of prompts that exemplify functions of evidence in relation to a claim. This scaffold was successful in accelerating…

This Statistics in Brief provides a snapshot of the state of teacher professional development activities among U.S. public school teachers using data collected through the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) Public School Teacher Questionnaire. This report relies on data provided by public school teachers about their professional…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there is a relationship between transformational principal leadership style, a safe school climate, and school safety (specifically, the number of reported fights and reported bullying incidents) in Broward County, Florida's middle schools. This study also investigated if a relationship…

Bullying and cyberbullying continue to be major problems in today's schools and topics of heightened public concern. This pilot study aimed to increase the knowledge base concerning bullying and cyberbullying, to explore the relationship between traditional bullying and cyberbullying, and to solicit information on the prevalence rates of…

This Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northwest study identifies how frequently students in six selected urban districts received exclusionary discipline during the 2011/12 school year, the most common reasons for such discipline, the percentage of students receiving multiple suspensions, and how many school days students lost to suspensions.…

This summary document presents findings from a Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northwest study that identifies how frequently students in six selected urban districts received exclusionary discipline during the 2011/12 school year, the most common reasons for such discipline, the percentage of students receiving multiple suspensions, and how…

Background: Whereas dating violence among high school students has been linked with sexual risk-taking and substance use, this association has been understudied among early adolescents. We estimated the prevalence of physical and nonphysical dating violence in a sample of middle school students and examined associations between dating violence,…

This study empirically derived a multiple risk factors model of the development of aggression among middle school students in urban, low-income neighborhoods, using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). Results indicated that aggression increased from sixth to eighth grade. Additionally, the influences of four risk domains (individual, family,…

Urban middle school students of color are disproportionately subjected to exclusionary discipline, reflecting a discipline gap between White students and students of color. The discipline gap results in negative outcomes similar to those caused by the academic achievement gap. Although the discipline gap occurs at all levels of schooling, it…