"Making Assessment Work: Ten Practitioner Beliefs" was developed by the National Practitioner Advisory Group on Using Data to Inspire SEL Practice (NPAG), a group of social and emotional learning (SEL) practice leaders convened to provide insights on SEL. Educators, program leaders, and policymakers recognize the value of holistically…

The Big Lift™ (Big Lift) is a preschool-third-grade collective impact initiative in San Mateo County, California. The initiative is a partnership of the County of San Mateo, San Mateo County Office of Education, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Launched in 2012, the initiative aims to boost children's reading proficiency by third grade…

The nation's schools should be safe havens for teaching and learning, free of crime and violence. Any instance of crime or violence at school not only affects the individuals involved, but also may disrupt the educational process and affect bystanders, the school itself, and the surrounding community. Establishing reliable indicators of the…

The ability of 96 children (five, eight, and 12 years old) to nominate strategic social action that would alter a peer's ongoing emotional state was examined. Nominated strategies were appropriate to the emotional state to be altered; a shift with age from material intervention strategies to strategies involving verbal intervention or helping was…

This article addresses two inconsistent findings in the literature on adolescent religious activity (RA) and substance use: whether a dose-response relationship characterizes the association of these variables, and whether the association varies by grade, gender, ethnicity, family structure, school type, and type of substance. Multinomial logistic…

Investigates reciprocity in friends' knowledge of each other's personal-social characteristics as a function of age and type of friendship. Using a picture-sort procedure, 48 first- and fourth-grade dyads from mutual and unilateral friendships selected items most descriptive of themselves and their friends. (Author/RH)

Recent studies on parental disciplinary practices focus on children's attributes that influence harshness of discipline. The present study examined the effects of facial babyishness on parents' recommendations regarding the discipline of 4- and 11-year-old children who had perpetrated an act of commission or of omission. It was predicted that the…

Two experiments examined the determinants of children's belief or disbelief of statements made to them by other children. In both, the personal characteristics of the child transmitting the message were varied against message type and age of child receiving the message; transmitter characteristics were relative age and social dominance. (RH)

Comparison of 87 child abuse victims of lone female perpetrators with 93 victims of lone male perpetrators found that female perpetrators abused children 3.3 years younger than male perpetrators. Both female and male perpetrators abused more girls than boys and did not differ in severity of abuse. (Author/DB)

The intent of this study was to investigate cognitive performance among Head Start children and to draw implications from such performance to increase understanding of the educational needs of Head Start children from families headed by unwed-mothers. Specific questions addressed whether cognitive performance among Head Start children differed on…

Patterns of mothering and fathering in 72 families were observed longitudinally and from the perspective of the family system when infants were 1, 3, and 9 months old. Findings suggested similarities and differences in mothering and fathering. (Author/RH)

This study reports on the extent to which pharmacological and behavioral consequences were applied to behavior problems within a population of 31,000 adults in New York's developmental services system. Findings indicated that these consequences were significantly related to variables of intellectual level, residential setting type, type and extent…

This report details demographic factors associated with 119 cases of physical child abuse occurring in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Findings address severity of abuse, age factors, perpetrator characteristics, family social class, family problems, psychological disorders, and substance abuse. (DB)

Previous research on friendship selection has failed to focus on how the selection process changes with age or in differently organized environments. This review of the literature takes a life-course perspective on the selection of friends, charting research results on three aspects of the selection process: (1) the number of friends and their…

Analysis of interactions during 55 videotaped interviews of high-risk sex abuse cases found no support for the assumption that a credible disclosure of abuse must include the display of emotion by the child. Some behavioral differences between preschool and school-age children were found, but no gender differences. (Author/DB)