This study examined the influence of a 4-month intervention on students' motivation in Grade 10 physical education and enrollment in elective physical education. Health Promoting Secondary School Physical Education (HPSS PE) was designed to improve students' psychological need satisfaction in physical education, based on self-determination theory.…

Background/Context: Across the United States, secondary school curricula are intensifying as a growing proportion of students enroll in high-level academic math courses. In many districts, this intensification process occurs as early as eighth grade, where schools are effectively constraining their mathematics curricula by restricting course…

Dynamic visualizations can make unseen phenomena such as chemical reactions visible but students need guidance to benefit from them. This study explores the value of generating drawings versus selecting among alternatives to guide students to learn chemical reactions from a dynamic visualization of hydrogen combustion as part of an online inquiry…

Using panel data from a census of public school students in the state of Florida, the authors examine the associations between students' high school course-taking in various subjects and their 10th-grade test scores, high school graduation, entry into postsecondary institutions, and postsecondary performance. The authors use propensity score…

The purpose of this study is to compare multiple measures of mathematics achievement for 1,378 cohort students who attended the same high school in a district from 9th to 12th grade with non-cohort students in each grade level. Results show that mobility had an impact on math achievement. After accounting for gender, ethnicity, and SES, adjusted…

The authors examine whether standards based accountability reforms of the past two decades have closed the achievement gap among public and private high school students. They analyzed data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to examine sector differences in high school achievement in the era of standards based reforms. The authors found…

In this paper, a companion piece to "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools" (ED544382), the authors analyze small high school spending in three urban districts--Baltimore City, Boston, and Chicago--to understand whether it is higher than in larger schools; if it is, why it is different; and the policy…