Objective: Increased action is needed to combat the growing epidemic of pediatric obesity. It is imperative that researchers investigate psychological and demographic variables that may be associated with pediatric obesity in order to formulate and implement more appropriate and effective interventions. The present study examined the univariate…

State education leaders are often interested in identifying schools that have demonstrated success with improving the literacy of students who are at the highest level of risk for reading difficulties. The identification of these schools that are "beating the odds" is typically accomplished by comparing a school's observed performance on…

The purpose of this study was to determine if principal tenure, principal stability, and principal educational experience in public education along with school-level variables predicted elementary school student achievement. A second purpose was to examine whether there was a significant difference between (a) levels of principal tenure and levels…

Educators and policymakers are paying increased attention to the academic outcomes of students in the middle grades (i.e., Grades 6-8). One reform proposed to improve outcomes for these students is to replace middle schools (with Grade 6-8, 7-8, or 7-9 configurations) with K-8 schools. This longitudinal study evaluated the effects of continuously…

State education leaders are often interested in identifying schools that have demonstrated success with improving the literacy of students who are at the highest level of risk for reading difficulties. The identification of these schools that are "beating the odds" is typically accomplished by comparing a school's observed performance on…

The purpose of the study was to investigate how English language proficiency is related to teacher judgments of students' academic and interpersonal competence. It was hypothesized that English Language Learner (ELL) students would generally be perceived as having weaker academic and interpersonal skills than their non-ELL counterparts regardless…

The authors, in a nonexperimental randomized study, used national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to examine present instructional practices for Grade 5 mathematics classrooms and its impact on achievement for White non-Hispanic non-English language learners (ELLs), Hispanic non-ELLs, and Hispanic…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between National Board Certification and student achievement in mathematics and reading as measured by an achievement test used in South Carolina. Using the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), the study examined the RIT (Rasch Unit) scores of third…

Background: African-American and Latino children living in neighborhoods with a low-socioeconomic index are more at risk of obesity-associated metabolic disease than their higher socioeconomic index and/or white peers. Currently, consistent and reliable questionnaires to evaluate nutrition and physical activity knowledge in these children are…