Career-connected learning is an educational strategy that combines high-quality academic instruction, skill-based learning, and real-world experiences to prepare students with the knowledge and skills that they need to pursue their career goals. Career-connected learning is especially important for an often-overlooked group of students including…

This quantitative causal-comparative study examined the impact of formal leadership training programs on educators possessing an administrator license within the public school systems of Tennessee. The investigation explored potential associations between program participation and elevated self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and retention rates. Data…

This paper examines the effect of fall 2020 school reopenings in Texas on county-level COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Previous evidence suggests that schools can be reopened safely if community spread is low and public health guidelines are followed. However, in Texas, reopenings often occurred alongside high community spread and at near capacity,…

With school reform efforts underway, students in foster care are in sharper focus as a subgroup and districts are now being held accountable for academic achievement for these youth. School counselors play a key role in the effort to increase rates of postsecondary enrollment and are often a primary support for academic planning, resource…

This paper explores the 2013 merger between Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools. The paper looks at this merger through a historical and philosophical perspective. At the core of the paper, it analyzes the effects of the merger and what role leadership and community opposition played in shaping its legacy.

Pastoralism is a production system closely linked with cultural identity that relies on raising livestock on pastures. Studies indicate that over 30 million people in the Great Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda) practice pastoralism and agropastoralism as a major source of…

Th e rise in residential mobility among families has created a pervasive issue in American schools that impacts the academic, social, and physical achievements of youth. This article aims to outline the profiles of two unique populations--migrant and military youth--impacted by residential mobility and provide recommendations for how their needs…

In partnership with the John M. Belk Endowment, MDC has researched and written the report, "North Carolina's Economic Imperative: Building an Infrastructure of Opportunity," part of our work with the endowment to study, address, and propose solutions for the low mobility rate of too many North Carolinians. The report examines patterns of…

The theories of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility have largely shaped the study of the effects of cultural capital on academic outcomes. Missing in this debate has been a rigorous examination of how children actually acquire cultural capital when it is not provided by their families. Drawing on data from a large-scale experimental study…

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities.…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the perceptions of former and current foster youth about the barriers they encountered during their K-12 education, and to learn how they overcame these obstacles and achieved academic success. The study included in-depth interviews of 11 participants, all of whom were current or former…

As educational attainment grows increasingly more essential to individual and societal prosperity and simultaneously more expensive, policymakers' appetite for evidence of the return on the investment in a college education has swelled and they increasingly want to equip prospective college students and their families with concrete information…

This brief reports on the first follow-up survey of the Coos Youth Study participants beyond high school. The focus of the Coos Youth Study, a ten-year panel study following the lives of youth in Coos County, New Hampshire, is the transition of Coos youth into adulthood. Author Eleanor Jaffee reports that approximately half of the Coos County…

Children living in poverty are at an elevated risk for academic, behavioral and emotional problems compared with children who are in the middle and upper classes (Kim-Cohen et al., 2004). Students living in poverty generally have fewer opportunities in schools as schools are less likely to offer rigorous curriculum or advanced classes for poor…

This paper presents the findings of a research project in which we transformed a primary (grade) 3 science curriculum for delivery via mobile technologies, and a teacher enacted the lessons over the 2009 academic year in a class in a primary school in Singapore. The students had a total of 21 weeks of the mobilized lessons in science, which were…