Due to the low academic performance of Liberian students, in 2013, the president of Liberia declared that the education sector needed to be overhauled. Consequently, the education minister launched a nationwide professional development (PD) program. Despite the PD initiatives, academic performance in an urban school district (USD, a pseudonym) has…

From my personal point of view, the role of a program evaluator is to gather information about the thoughts and experiences of individuals impacted by the program and to use the findings to inform program improvement. However, participants in the evaluation may be reluctant to share their full thoughts due to factors such as power imbalances and a…

The Columbus Promise, a place-based tuition-free college program for graduates of Columbus City Schools, was created in 2021 and began granting scholarships to the high school graduating class of 2022. The initial phase of the Columbus Promise is a three-year pilot covering the high school graduating classes of 2022, 2023, and 2024. The overriding…

Effective, engaging teacher collaboration contributes to continuous school improvement and overall student success. This formative, internal program evaluation used a combination of objectives-based and improvement-focused models to determine what worked well in mandated PLCs at MHS, what aspects of these PLCs needed improvement, and what…

Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) SCORE Academy is an alternative learning high school composed of two distinct programs. SCORE Academy Re-engagement (A) serves students who are 16 to 21 years old and need to earn between one and 10 credits toward graduation. SCORE Academy Reassignment (B) serves students who have been reassigned by the…

This mixed methods study was designed for two purposes: (1) to provide district and campus leaders data about the effectiveness of how the studied district's READ 180 and System 44 literacy intervention programs were implemented, and (2) to assess the programs' impact on student outcomes to determine whether the district was meeting literacy goals…

Academic mentoring programs promote high school completion for at-risk youth. The purpose of this study was to hear the voice of youth in order to inform program services and develop best practices for meeting their academic needs. Using a grounded theory approach, we conducted 14 focus groups to examine high school students' perceptions and…

LifeSkills Training is the only program to prevent substance use disorder among adolescents that has evidence of effects on substance use outcomes from multiple randomized controlled trials. Evaluations have shown that the version for middle school students reduces their use of substances in high school, but these studies were conducted in the…

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) is continuing its five-year grant, "An Equitable Pathway to In-Demand STEM Careers," which began in Fall 2021 to facilitate Hispanic students' degree completion and career preparation in STEM fields. In its third year, the grant team followed the original proposal to: 1. Offer effective…

As the youth mental health crisis continues to worsen, there is a need for more evidence-based social-emotional interventions that can be applied in schools -- the setting in which youth are most likely to seek and receive mental health treatment (Simon et al., 2015). Further, exploring ways to culturally adapt interventions for marginalized…

The Wisconsin School Violence and Bullying Prevention Study, funded by the National Institutes of Justice (NIJ), was a two-year case-control study in 24 Wisconsin middle schools (11 experimental; 13 control) seeking to understand the impact of a comprehensive bullying prevention program on bullying victimization rates. Participating schools'…

California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) continues its five-year grant, "An Equitable Pathway to In-Demand STEM Careers," that began in Fall 2021 to facilitate Hispanic students' degree completion and career preparation in STEM fields. In the second year, the grant team has made satisfactory progress in offering summer and winter…

Learning to set age-appropriate boundaries is an integral element of positive youth development. Both parents and youth need guidance in rule-rsetting and negotiating boundaries. North Dakota State University Extension created Boundaries, a program using parent-youth relationships to teach the importance of setting and following rules or…

Public schools follow school improvement guidelines to improve outcomes for students. This study utilized a quantitative method with a correlational design to discern any relationship between the NCStar School Improvement Program Indicators and student proficiency scores. The population for the study was 636 public high schools implementing the…

This mixed-methods study aims to evaluate the English Preparatory Program (EPP) offered at the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) at an English-medium foundation university in Turkey during 2017-18 academic year to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the program. Participants of the study were 241 students and 26 teachers. The data were…