A concern with formal and epistemological access to schools can neglect the importance of access to the informal school and the friendships and sense of belonging that this implies. Despite the challenges of "voice" research, listening to what young people have to say about their experiences of, and attitudes towards social inclusion and…

Implications of high school exit examination performance were examined with a sample of 672 racial/ethnic minority students. Exit examination failure in the 10th grade was negatively linked to subsequent grade point average, school engagement, and school belonging one year later, controlling for outcomes prior to taking the examination.…

This ethnographic study at a public high school in the Northeastern United States investigates the process of change in students' environmental identity and proenvironmental behaviors during an Environmental Science course. The study explores how sociocultural factors, such as students' background, social interactions, and classroom structures,…

Theory on student learning provides that students are able to direct their learning when they have metacognitive knowledge about their own learning processes. In this article, a preliminary attempt to assess untrained high-school students’ metacognitive knowledge of learning processes as an ability through multiple-choice questions is reported. In…

Despite many years of efforts to communicate new scientific knowledge to the public, surveys continue to suggest that many people remain uninformed about current scientific research (Miller, 2001; Miller, 2004) and fail to recognize how it can be relevant to their lives. There is continued need for investigation on improving methods for engaging…

Classroom-based continuous assessment (CA) has become an important component of Namibia's post-independence emphasis on learner-centred education. This paper compares continuous assessment results with end-of-year examination marks for Grade 10 Mathematics for the years 2008-2010. Against this backdrop, and given that classroom-based continuous…

The purpose of this study was to look at mission driven school district leadership in Massachusetts public schools and attempt to identify any relationship, or lack thereof, between district mission statements and student achievement. In this study, 288 Massachusetts public school districts are ranked according to their 2011 high school graduation…

No matter how well an educator evaluation system is designed, it can only be as effective as those who are actually implementing it in the trenches (Stronge, 1993). Unfortunately, many educational reforms at the school level have entirely failed or have failed to be implemented as designed. While much of the current educator evaluation research is…

This action research study examined the effect of Read 180, a research-based reading intervention program, on the reading achievement among struggling readers in Grades 9-11 as measured by reading clusters on the Language Arts Literacy portion of the High School Proficiency Assessment, final English grades, and Lexile scores. Struggling readers…

The action research project report was created to remedy a lack of multicultural literature within the regular level sophomore English class and to assist regular level sophomore students' connection to their reading. The teacher-researcher also examined her students' own ethnic backgrounds, cultures, religions, economic status, gender, and/or…

Bullying is a serious problem within the U.S. school system. Prior research suggests that victimization is stratified by race and ethnicity. However, few studies consider factors that may moderate this relationship. This article extends research on this topic by considering whether stereotypes moderate bullying among racial and ethnic youth. Youth…

Historically, the relationship between student academic achievement and use of computers for fun and video gaming has been described from a multitude of perspectives, from positive, to negative, to neutral. However, recent research has indicated that computer use and video gaming may be positively associated with achievement, yet these studies…

This study shows that minority students who, based upon a standardized test, have shown a high academic performance capability have a readiness for rigorous courses in high school and can sustain high academic achievement over time when compared to non-minority peers. Therefore, the on-going question for many educators needs to be why doesn't…

The main focus of this study was to investigate if, or to what extent, there is a significant relationship between high school science course sequencing and proficiency on 11th grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) Science. The Florida Legislature mandated a specific number of sciences as a requirement for graduation. High schools…

We investigated the criterion-related validity of four indicators of curriculum-based measurement in writing (WCBM) when using expository versus narrative writing prompts as compared to the validity of passage copying speed. Specifically, we compared criterion-related validity of production-dependent (total words written, correct word sequences),…