Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in student absenteeism in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, food insecurity remains a persistent issue across the globe, including in the US. Food insecurity shapes students' immediate and wider contexts and may worsen school attendance. Applying ecological systems theory, we…

Exclusionary discipline practices can widen the opportunity gap for at-risk students (Baker & Coley, 2013; Black, 2016; Crosby et al., 2018; Gibson & Gibson, 2019; Mallett, 2016; McCarter, 2017; Porter, 2015; Williams et al., 2017). The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between student risk factors and exclusionary…

Introduction: Education is a social determinant of health, and its intersection with incarceration is a powerful nexus for well-being of students. Whether policies specific to student well-being are associated with exclusionary discipline, a documented risk factor for incarceration, is unknown. This study has three aims: (1) to identify whether…

Poverty has an enormous impact on children and their success in school. Children with low socioeconomic status often perform poorly in reading. Poor reading skills often lead to truancy, low rates of high school graduation, low-paying jobs, and cycles of illiteracy in generations of families. Secondary data was collected from the Tennessee…

School district provided transportation is one way to support student attendance and achievement. By removing the obstacle of getting to school, school districts provide the opportunity for students to learn in school. In a secondary database analysis of 2018-2019 data, this study triangulates student achievement, attendance, and transportation to…

Purpose/Objectives: Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) participation rates often underserve the number of children in the community needing access to food. Each year, District 87 in Bloomington, Illinois offers children 18 years old and younger a free lunch at six feeding sites throughout the community as part of the SFSP. During the summer of…

The purpose of this study investigated the role of K-12 education in breaking the cycle of poverty in the Southeastern Public School District, focusing on the relationship between school-level poverty and key student outcomes: (a) graduation rates, (b) job placement, and (c) college acceptance. This study assessed the timing of federal-, state-,…

A common rationale for providing free lunch for all students is that selectively receiving a free meal at school generates stigma. This study examines the hypothesis that eligibility to receive a school free lunch has negative effects on student educational outcomes, and that this stigma-effect is more severe in schools where a low proportion of…

Background: This study examines the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic on academic and career concerns of high school students; relationship between attendance and grades with educational concerns; and association between student perception of the pandemic and decision to attend school virtually or in-person. Methods: Diverse students in grades…

The Career and Technical Education (CTE)-focused dual credits programs are proven to promote both career and academic benefits to students. This quantitative study matched and analyzed transcript data from 245 high school students enrolled in CTE dual credit programs in an urban public school district in a southern state of the U.S. The school…

The purpose of this correlational, explanatory, cross-sectional quantitative research was to determine whether teacher absenteeism and student achievement are related in rural schools. This correlational study examines the predictor variable of teacher absenteeism on academic outcomes and also is inclusive of control variables teacher mobility,…

In this study, the authors correlate proficiency rates of seventh-grade civics students to free and reduced-priced (FRPL) lunch status during the 2015-2016 school year at the school level, across all 348 Florida schools for which both statistics were applicable and available. The authors used simple linear regression to test the null hypothesis…

This study was designed to investigate the influence of poverty and parent marital status on eighth grade student achievement as measured by the EXPLORE, a precursor to the ACT. The sample included 520 eighth grade students at a middle school in West Kentucky--parent marital status, free/reduced lunch status, and EXPLORE test scores were obtained…

Anti-immigrant hostility continues to rise throughout multicultural societies. Building on segmented assimilation theory, in this manuscript I examine whether anti-immigrant sentiment might decrease school performance of immigrant children using the case of California, the state with the largest population of immigrants in the United States. I…

The purpose of this correlational quantitative study was to conduct an exploratory empirical investigation examining the relationship between student hope (Snyder et al., 1991) and student collective trust in teachers (STT) (Forsyth et al., 2011) at a large urban public freshman academy in the student trust in teachers that implemented social and…