High school students from low-income backgrounds experience academic under-preparedness, financial distress, and socialization challenges when entering college. For these students, challenges may begin in the K-12 setting, where this population is more likely to face limitations in college counseling, lack highly qualified teachers, and have…

The effects of transitions impact students across academic levels in many ways. The transition to high school can be a vulnerable time; moreover, it may be an optimal time for preventive interventions. As students matriculate and transition from middle to high school, a concentrated effort must be made to improve the practices to best support…

Effective collaboration among family professional partnerships (FPPs) and work groups such as a multidisciplinary individualized education program (IEP) team has been identified as a critical characteristic in developing a specially designed program for students with a disability. Unfortunately, educators often do not feel prepared to interact and…

Efforts to improve outcomes for students amidst a climate of school accountability have led to a myriad of education initiatives, perhaps none as profound and widespread as the tiered intervention models offered by the RTI and MTSS frameworks. While those who advocate for tiered intervention models argue that these systems bring support to…

School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) are an integral part of schools across the United States. When implementing SWPBIS, academic achievement, emotional regulation, prosocial behavior increases while behavioral problems, bullying, exclusionary discipline teacher stress and teacher burnout decrease. Despite the…

This study examined a differentiated, bottom-up approach to school improvement planning through exploration of the qualities that make up a highly effective school department team as it related to their ability to create and meet a student-centered, data driven high achievement goal. While there are a multitude of factors that affect the ability…

Previous research has shown that parents of children receiving special education services often have negative feelings associated with Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings, such as feeling confused, overwhelmed, intimidated, powerless, frustrated, and undervalued (Stoner et al., 2005; Ilik & Er, 2019; Mueller & Vick, 2019). Currently…

This constructivist qualitative case study examined factors that assisted and impeded the expansion of City University of New York's (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) from 4,300 to 25,000 students between 2014-2018. The study consisted of open-ended interviews with 11 CUNY system and college leaders who directly led the work…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) involves developing self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills crucial for success in school, work, and life. This study aimed to explore middle school teachers' perceptions of SEL implementation, the support needed, and the strategies used. It also examined the relationship between these perceptions and…

The views of a transition/IEP team members of the collaborative efforts of each other have had little or limited viewing. Annually there are approximately six million special education students in the United States of America (Samuels, 2017). While in high school, these students and their transition/IEP team are tasked with preparing them for…

Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) have been increasingly implemented in schools since the re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. Despite researchers' efforts to identify elements of MTSS--including evidence-based practices, leadership and communication systems and…

Education is one of the most important professions in our society, instilling knowledge of our past and securing our future. As educational leaders leave the profession, there is a growing demand for qualified educational leaders to fill the vacancies created. The quantitative research study aimed to determine if a correlation existed between…

Formal collaborative structures for teacher teams as professional learning communities (PLC) have long been a supported practice aimed at changing instructional practice and increasing student outcomes in a cycle of continuous improvement. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the implementation of PLC teams at the middle school level in a…

The Individualized Education Program (IEP) remains a pivotal document for ensuring educational equity for students with disabilities in public education (Bateman, 2017). This qualitative interview study investigated how an IEP team supporting a student with extensive support needs navigated the decision-making process during annual IEP…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to seek descriptions from people included in, and excluded from, participating on transition teams for adolescents with intellectual disabilities entering adulthood in New Jersey. The theoretical framework included two theories to support this research. Faludi's Procedural Planning Theory…