As the rise in need for social emotional learning (SEL) becomes apparent in schools, the lack consistent implementation in schools is apparent. Information has been collected stating how districts, schools, and teachers implement their own SEL lessons into the classroom to promote student well-being. The purpose of this qualitative study was to…

Background: School-level implementation of district-level local wellness policies (LWPs) is needed to create school environments that promote nutrition and physical activity (PA). Disparities in classroom-specific LWPs implementation were examined. Methods: administrator survey (N = 756 schools; 24/24 districts) included 6 classrooms LWP…

Fidelity of implementation of school practices is crucial to student outcomes. Several types of tools, including self-assessments, are available for measuring fidelity, but little is known regarding the relation of self-assessments of fidelity to fidelity instruments completed with the support of external experts, specifically, during the first…

U.S. public education systems are required to provide free appropriate public education to students with disabilities in least restrictive environments that are appropriate to meet their individual needs. The practice of educating students with disabilities in neighborhood schools in age-appropriate general education classrooms and other school…

The Multidisciplinary Education, Training, and Support (METS) program is designed to meet the linguistic and academic needs of recently arrived English Learners (ELs) who are identified as Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE). The METS program in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) includes students in elementary,…

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),…

Although the number of schools implementing School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is increasing, and there is great demand for evidence-based Tier 2 and 3 interventions for students requiring additional support, little systematic research has examined administrator support for such programming. This article examines…

The Office of Shared Accountability evaluated the "Universal Design for Learning" (UDL) projects during spring 2013. UDL is an instructional framework that seeks to give all students equal opportunities to learn, by providing multiple means of representation, of action and expression, and of engagement. To inform future implementation…

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation has partnered with Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) to complete a series of reports examining the implementation and impact of the Baltimore Elementary and Middle School Library Project (Library Project). This report on the first year of the project examines the experiences of the…

High fidelity implementation of school-wide PBIS has been linked with improvements in student and staff behavior, but less is known about which aspects of the model may be present in schools prior to training, and whether some features of PBIS are implemented faster than others. The present study examines the progression of school-wide PBIS…

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…

Two schools in Maryland received ARRA SIG (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act School Improvement Grants) funds to enable them to implement their turnaround efforts. This paper describes the outcomes of these two ARRA SIG recipient schools: (1) G. James Gholson Middle School; and (2) Commodore John Rodgers Elementary School. The experiences of…

This technical report presents third-year analyses of the progress of five Maryland elementary schools participating in a multi-school, multi-district implementation of the Core Knowledge Curriculum (E. Hirsch, 1987, 1996). Third-year results are presented in the areas of implementation and outcomes. Factors clearly affecting implementation of…

This article presents an example of how school time was monitored to facilitate a cost analysis of school-wide systems of positive behavior support (PBS). The article provides descriptions of how (a) PBS efforts were initiated in the school, (b) time and money were spent preparing for and implementing PBS, and (c) changes in behavior referrals and…

When the author was a little girl, her father told her the story of how he once saw the great Harry Houdini escape from a straight jacket. In the early 1900s, Houdini fascinated thousands of people by performing feats of life-threatening daring and agility. Houdini was a professional in the traditional sense: he acted alone, kept his trade secrets…