Background: Research on physical activity breaks and facilities (indoor and outdoor) in secondary schools is relatively limited. Methods: School administrators and students in nationally representative samples of 8th (middle school) and 10th/12th grade (high school) students were surveyed annually from 2008-2009 to 2011-2012. School administrators…

Proficiency in writing increases opportunities in higher education, employment, and social relationships. Many students in the United States, however, are struggling writers. In particular, the writing performance of students with disabilities in secondary grades continues to lag behind grade level peers. The purpose of this article was to review…

The author examined the effects of teacher caring, teacher content explanations, and teacher interest promotion on Latino students' interest, self-efficacy, and achievement in mathematics. Participants in the year-long study were 326 Latino 9th- and 10th-grade students attending a large urban high school in southern California. Teacher variables…

In this study, differential item functioning (DIF) trends were examined for English language learners (ELLs) versus non-ELL students in third and tenth grades on a large-scale reading assessment. To facilitate the analyses, a meta-analytic DIF technique was employed. The results revealed that items requiring knowledge of words and phrases in…

Background: The context is the new Texas STAAR end-of-course testing program. Purpose: The authors developed a logistic regression model to predict who would pass-or-fail the new Texas chemistry STAAR end-of-course exam. Setting: Robert E. Lee High School (5A) with an enrollment of 2700 students, Tyler, Texas. Date of the study was the 2011-2012…

This study investigated the impact of one large suburban high school's ninth grade transition program, the freshman academy, on students' cognitive and affective engagement in high school. Participants of the study embodied tenth grade students who had completed their freshmen year in the academy and freshmen academy staff who also…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of socioeconomic status on the achievement of high school students participating in a one-to-one laptop computer program. Students living in poverty struggle to achieve in schools across the country, educators must address this issue. The independent variable in this study is socioeconomic…

This study used mixed methods to compare perceptions of relational aggression (RA) of adolescent girls (n = 282) and their teachers (n = 15) in New Zealand, and to explore strategies for teachers to effectively manage RA in the classroom. Results indicated that younger adolescent girls view physical aggression as more acceptable than older girls,…

In view of the lack of instruments for measuring biology teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), this article reports on a study about the development of PCK items for measuring teachers' knowledge of pupils' errors and ways for dealing with them. This study investigated 9th and 10th grade German pupils' (n = 461) drawings in an achievement…

With a sample of 831 U.S. adolescents (49% girls) followed from 9th to 11th grade, the directionality of the association between school-based peer victimization and adolescents' perception of their parents' psychological control were examined. Possible mediating influences of internalizing symptoms were also explored. The results highlight the…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a model-based introductory physics curriculum on conceptual learning in a Physics First (PF) Initiative. This is the first comparative study in physics education that applies the Rasch modeling approach to examine the effects of a model-based curriculum program combined with PF in the United…

Studies of the effect of parental involvement on students' achievement in a variety of contexts can provide valuable insights into how the relationship between parental involvement and students' achievement may depend on specific local contexts of education and family. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives derived from social capital model, this…

The study aimed to empirically verify findings from qualitative studies that showed selective consumers could be distinguished from underachievers with regard to academic self-perception and thinking style preference. Participants, gifted males from an independent secondary boys' school in Sydney, Australia, were categorized as achieving,…

The present study utilized a latent variable modeling approach to examine the Simple View of Reading in a sample of students from 3rd, 7th, and 10th grades (N = 215, 188, and 180, respectively). Latent interaction modeling and other latent variable models were employed to investigate (a) the functional form of the relationship between decoding and…

The researchers performed a variable analysis of the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Study data investigating factors that influence students' reading scores on standardized tests. Hispanic and non-Hispanic Scores were analyzed and controlling variables were compared to determine the effect of each on both populations. Certain variables commonly…