Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a framework that is used in many school districts in the state of Florida. When implemented with fidelity, this preventative program is designed to promote a positive climate and culture in schools, with the aim of limiting behavior that distracts or disrupts the learning environment, thus…

Anti-LGBTQ+ school legislation has proliferated across the United States in recent years, with potential consequences for both students and school counselors. Florida's controversial 2022 Parental Rights in Education Act offers one such example. In this descriptive, phenomenological, qualitative study, we examined the experiences of 10 Florida…

Enny Elementary School (This is an actual school with a different name to protect the identity of all stakeholders. All data is real, and any names used are pseudonyms.) is in South Florida and operates under the auspices of The Palm Beach County School District. The school serves over seven hundred students with forty-three teachers and…

Justine Finley, newly appointed principal of Northside Elementary, had been tasked with increasing her school's grade under the state accountability system and keeping neighborhood families from choosing to enroll in the charter school down the street. The superintendent made these priorities very clear. After spending the first 3 months observing…

Community Partnership Schools™ are designed to serve as a positive resource center in their community, staffed with dedicated professionals committed to student success and community well-being (Coalition for Community Schools, n.d.; Ellis, 2016). Following the education model created at the University of Central Florida (UCF), the first…

To date there are no evidence-based comprehensive interventions for use in school settings. There are numerous barriers to delivery of high-quality interventions in schools that have limited the transfer of research-based interventions to school settings. "Modular Approach to Autism Programing for Schools (MAAPS)" is a framework for…

Research across the decades has confirmed that effective school leadership is associated with better outcomes for students and schools. A high-quality school leader affects dozens of teachers and hundreds or thousands of students. It is a pivotal role. From 2011 to 2016, The Wallace Foundation, through its Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI),…

School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is a systems approach to supporting the social and emotional needs of all children utilized by more than 21,000 schools across the nation. Data from numerous studies and state projects' evaluation reports point to the impact of SWPBIS on student outcomes (office discipline referrals…

School reform and turnaround efforts have been in the public eye since the signing of the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA) into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965. Research has been focused on the School Improvement Grant, as well as the essential components that improve performance of schools. This qualitative case examines one…

This brief is one in a series highlighting state policies, regulations, practices, laws, or other tools intended to create the necessary conditions for school and/or district turnaround. Each brief includes an overview of the relevant turnaround tool, its development process, its impact, and lessons learned that could assist other education…

Over the last several decades, suburban schools have become increasingly more diverse and now must respond to racial change, so that they can successfully educate an increasingly more diverse and multiracial student body. This article analyzes interview responses of administrators, teachers, and staff at 19 schools in six diversifying suburban…

Since the 2012/13 school year Florida law has required the 100 lowest performing elementary schools in reading to extend the school day by one hour to provide supplemental reading instruction. In 2014 the law was broadened to include the 300 elementary schools with the lowest reading performance. A previous study of the state's first two cohorts…

The top priority for the U.S. Department of Education's new Race to the Top-District (RTT-D) competition is to create personalized-learning environments to bolster student achievement: "Absolute Priority 1: Personalized Learning Environments. To meet this priority, an applicant must coherently and comprehensively address how it will build on…

The purpose of this research was to examine the level of School-wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) implementation in the State of Florida. The relationship between implementation fidelity of SWPBS to academic and behavioral outcomes for elementary and middle schools was then analyzed. The results of this study found that SWPBS is being…

Effectively scaling up evidence-based educational practices requires identification of barriers to the wide-scale implementation and maintenance of such practices at a distance from the original research and development team. The two studies reported here investigated the implementation of ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) in nine schools across five…