In 2007, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5097, which required the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to convene a task force to examine how gangs are affecting school safety. The task force must annually report its findings and recommendations to the education committees of the Legislature. The Gangs in Schools Task Force…

This study was conducted to explore the effects of an event history calendar (EHC) approach on adolescent sexual risk communication and sexual activity. Adolescent school-linked health clinic patients (n = 30) who reported sexual activity self-administered the EHC that was used by nurse practitioners (NPs; n = 2) during a clinic visit. Immediately…

New Visions for Public Schools has leveraged student-level data to help schools identify at-risk students, designed metrics to capture student progress toward graduation, developed data tools and reports that visualize student progress at different levels of aggregation for different audiences, and implemented real-time data systems for educators.…

Many states and districts across the country struggle with designing and implementing coherent dropout prevention initiatives that promote academic advancement, especially for special needs students, who drop out at much higher rates than the general student population. This "snapshot" describes New Hampshire's innovative use of data…

This article reports a synthesis of intervention studies conducted between 1994 and 2004 with older students (Grades 6-12) with reading difficulties. Interventions addressing decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension were included if they measured the effects on reading comprehension. Twenty-nine studies were located and synthesized.…

Much has been written about the value of teacher research for inservice teachers. Despite the existence of several studies affirming these words, studies that richly describe how student teachers learn to do teacher research and then investigate the impact of inquiry on student teachers and teacher educators, particularly in culturally and…

This study examined the relationship between environment-based education and high school students critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking. Four hundred four 9th and 12th grade students from 11 Florida high schools participated in the study. A Pretest-Posttest Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design (9th grade) and a…