School principals are critical to students' academic achievement, second only to teachers. They are the primary agents of change in their schools, fostering supportive learning environments that enhance student learning and teacher effectiveness. Moreover, they often design and oversee the initiatives and hiring to sustain the positive changes…

In this article, the authors share an account of an eighth-grade personal narrative unit designed to support students in composing accounts of life during the 2020-21 pandemic school year. The article provides an overview of the four phases that comprised this nine-lesson unit and the materials and resources used. Students' voices, perspectives,…

As evidenced by national data, a large proportion of students in middle school, content area classrooms in the United States (U.S.) may be considered developing readers. Evidence-based literacy practices and explicit instructional practices can support these students' literacy development. Yet, research suggests that teachers often miss…

California, known for having the largest economy in the United States, faces significant educational inequities. This report focuses on the racial and ethnic academic disparities in California's Central and Imperial Valleys (CIV). Despite California's overall economic strength, the CIV remains a pocket of severe socio-economic hardship, with…

The student check-up (SCU) is a brief school-based motivational interviewing intervention developed to promote academic-related behavioral changes and to increase accessibility to mental health services. Despite published randomized controlled trials demonstrating SCU's effectiveness in promoting student self-efficacy in academic efforts, the…

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to analyze how the popular comic book series DC Graphic Novel for Young Adults depicts superhero, civilian and villains of color in the titles and address how the collection engages in or avoids discussions of racism. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a critical race content analysis to analyze how…

Given the complexity of dialogic argumentative writing and the requisite instruction needed to support student writers, we describe the instructional practices of an English language arts teacher and her culturally and linguistically diverse classroom of 10th graders' writing during key moments in two instructional units during school year…

We study the peer effects of grade retention in the context of Indiana's statewide third-grade retention policy. When a retention occurs, it changes the peer group for two cohorts: rising fourth graders who lose a peer and rising third graders who gain a peer. We identify peer effects in both cohorts by leveraging plausibly exogenous variation in…

Extending and challenging existing research about LGBTQIA+ life in rural educational contexts, this ethnographically informed qualitative study describes how Lulu--a white, cisgender, queer secondary English language arts teacher in a rural, public school in the Midwest--discursively constructed the functions of her humor with respect to teaching,…

The focus of this article is on the development of expertise in interpreting literature within English Language Arts (ELA). Experts and novices differ significantly in how they approach problems and acquire information, with experts demonstrating more sophisticated pattern recognition, nuances, and conceptual understandings and approaches than…

Herein, I explore the meanings of the oft-used phrase "children's voices." The phrase is seldom defined in the literature on children's language, oral and written. And yet, studying those voices has been fronted as a key methodological tool allowing insights into concerns about equity and the erasure of "nonmainstream"…

There are more anti-LGBTQ+ policies and legislation affecting schools now than ever before. Within this political milieu, teachers navigate censorship, surveillance, community criticism, and curricular mandates that limit or even illegalize their efforts to foster queer- and trans-affirming classrooms. This article presents a case study of Echo's…

We examine grading biases by gender, migration status, and class achievement using standardized tests and grades from three full cohorts in language and mathematics. Significant biases favoring girls and native students are found in language. In mathematics, a bias favoring girls appears only when controlling for class achievement. A strong…

Long before ChatGPT, it was an open secret that students did not always read the books they were assigned in their English Language Arts (ELA) classes, relying instead on online study guides like SparkNotes. Via a retrospective survey, our exploratory study examined (1) the rate of SparkNotes use among high-school ELA students; (2) why students…

The Civic Literacy series showcases how the knowledges, skills, and commitments of English language arts can explore traditional understandings of "civic education" and in its place offer creative possibilities for civic world-building in K--12 classrooms and communities. This, the third volume of the series, features contributions from…