During her term on the California State Board of Education, Naomi Porter realized that student and adult board members alike struggle to effectively engage their primary constituents--students. Student state board members face the added challenges of making an impact during relatively short terms of service and of identifying mentors who can help…

For the past three years, Digital Promise has embarked on an expansive and human-centered endeavor to empower school districts to cultivate context-relevant solutions to the teacher of color workforce disparities. Through Digital Promise's Inclusive Innovation approach, teachers of color from various school districts were engaged to develop and…

Background: The Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS) is administered biennially to adolescents; it covers knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors about risk and protective factors. Purpose: This study explored 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students' attitudes and beliefs about current trends regarding drugs, alcohol, and mental health. Methods: We asked…

In response to federal accountability measures, the Pennsylvania Department of Education introduced the School Performance Profile, shifting the student achievement spotlight from school districts to individual schools, thus placing the onus squarely on the shoulders of teachers and school leaders. Shared leadership has been touted in the…

This study examined the effects of a school improvement project involving Distributed leadership (DL), a perspective for studying or developing organization leadership through the interaction of organizational members and activities. This research was part of a larger DL Project taking place in York City School District, PA, which sought to…

The Pennsylvania State University [PSU] and State College Area School District Professional Development [SCASD] School won a National Association of Professional Development Schools Exemplary PDS [professional development school] Achievement Award in 2018. This award article offers an overview of the partnership's commitment to the NAPDS [National…

"Teacher-Powered Practices: How teacher teams collaboratively lead and create student-centered schools" focuses on how innovative teachers are radically changing the ways schools are designed and run. The how here are the common practices, structures, and processes teacher-powered teams design and use daily. The guide identifies nine…

This article describes the development and ongoing operations of the GreenEriePA.org project, a portal to all things environmental in Erie County, PA. Through regular input from community partners, GreenEriePA turned into a much larger, long-term project than the faculty coordinators at Gannon University, Erie, PA, originally anticipated. We…

This paper identifies those factors that led to American Association of University Professors (AAUP) representation at the nation's oldest degree-granting Historically Black College University (HBCU). In the span of 18 months, Lincoln Faculty overwhelmingly embraced unionism when the body agreed to have AAUP as its official agent in the collective…

To meet current federal regulations and provide the opportunity for individuals to receive services in the least restrictive environments, states are focusing on providing day habilitation services in inclusive community environments, rather than traditional congregate facility-based programs. The two main services of day habilitation focus on…

Youth organizing work benefits young people in myriad ways, equipping them with the skills and dispositions to organize around the systemic inequities and policy decisions that threaten their communities. The findings from this life histories study in the Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) reveal that the organization's collectivist leadership model…

The central focus of this multilayered educational action research project was three-fold: (1) to provide opportunities for public school student leadership activities grounded in participatory and youth participatory action research; (2) to support a group of teacher-researchers in practicing and innovating in participatory action research…

Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard in research but may not fully explain or predict outcome variations in community-based interventions. Demonstrating efficacy of externally driven programs in well-controlled environments may not translate to community-based implementation where resources and priorities vary. A bottom-up evaluation…

Urban districts throughout the nation are contending with declining enrollment, aging facilities in disrepair, persistently low student achievement, increased competition with charters, and severe fiscal constraints. Philadelphia is a case in point. Over the past year, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) was forced to borrow $304 million…

The purpose of this study was to identify what leadership behaviors are associated with each of Spillane's (2006) three conceptually distinct forms of distributed leadership, and to determine whether specific influence tactics (Yukl, Seifert & Chavez, 2008) are differentially associated with each form. A two-phased, mixed methods design was…