While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all families and communities, it is most deeply impacting students of color, students from low-income families, English learners, youth in foster care, unhoused students, students with disabilities, and other marginalized children and youth -- as well as their families. The pandemic has exposed and worsened…

How can we support academic growth for students with disabilities (SWD) who may have experienced disproportionate academic impacts from COVID-19? Recent NWEA research may help inform how federal ESSER [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] and IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] funding can provide early intervention,…

As schools transitioned to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, community-based organizations pivoted from providing afterschool programs to dealing with all manner of crises and basic needs. Some out-of-school time (OST) providers stayed open to provide full-day programs for the children of first responders and essential workers, while…

This preregistered, randomized field experiment tested the effectiveness of a brief deep breathing intervention on children's concurrent physiological arousal in naturalistic settings (N = 342; M[subscript age] = 7.48 years; 46% female; 53% Asian, 26% White; 21% other race/ethnicity). The treatment consisted of an animated video that introduced…

This study examines the effects of an incentivized summer enrollment initiative on student persistence. In particular, we analyze how participation in summer classes (at least 3 credit hours) affect students' likelihood to reenroll in the fall semester at a two-year, private, technical college in Boston. The novel initiative, which provides…

This article argues that contemporary resources drawing from 19th-century Mussar wisdom and Positive Psychology in the context of Jewish camp are a great vehicle for communicating our virtues and teaching "21st Century Innovation and Learning Skills." Based on practitioner research, this article draws on over a decade of working with…

Friendships and self-determination are two factors that positively influence success in school and adult life. Examining the relationship between these two constructs among a sample of students who were deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), the researchers used the Self-Determination Inventory: Student Report (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Burke, & Palmer,…

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) was connected to the cause out of a desire to motivate college students to become involved in its labor-organizing campaign. Other allied labor unions (here, academic labor unions) were also potentially connected to this goal. In 1996, the AFL-CIO developed the…

Civic engagement is not just concerned with identifying societal and political structures. It is also concerned with how young people understand themselves as civic agents capable of starting and sustaining change. Seeing students as change makers is a civically engaged goal supported by literature surrounding the aims of art education in K-12…

This study follows a mathematical camp for high-school students identified as gifted, and examines it with a socio-cultural lens. Our goal is to examine the identities of students in the camp and the valued actions according to which these identities were authored, both by the students and by their instructors. Data was collected from three rounds…

The Pre-College Summer Program at the University of Connecticut is designed to introduce upper-level high school students (rising juniors and seniors) to college life by allowing them to live on campus for a week while taking a college-level course. Within the context of this program, we developed a class designed to introduce high school students…

Summer reading programs are a common means of providing wraparound services to improve the performance of students' with or at risk for reading disabilities. Today's programs are not merely camps but are complex and costly academic efforts that require year-round planning to be successful. School personnel responsible for these programs typically…

This article examines how Upward Bound (UB) program leaders promote socioemotional learning (SEL) opportunities to further the social justice of federal policy aims. I examine five program leaders' efforts through a policy implementation framework, focusing on their capabilities. Results show that the program leaders' capabilities--values,…

In 2018 RESCHOOL Colorado launched the Blueprint4SummerCO (B4SCO) website, an online resource that aggregates summer activities available around Metropolitan Denver into a comprehensive searchable database. The RESCHOOL team aimed to both surface summer programming throughout the community and provide families with a tool that would simplify their…

Many professional STEM jobs go unfilled annually, especially by diverse people. To increase the number of STEM graduates to fill these jobs, bridge programs at college campuses across the country look for innovative ways to support and retain these diverse, underserved populations. Today's Generation Z campus population is not only diverse but…